Friday afternoon staff meeting

(Photo of the Girl's Folk Dance Team...nothing to do with the post topic.))

I can't imagine scheduling a two-hour Friday afternoon school staff meeting in America, but here in Turkey nobody seems to bat an eye. So at 4:30 pm, I grabbed a quick glass of chai, trying to avoid falling asleep to the drone of Turkish and then met the staff in the Cinema Salonu (theater).

When the movie began I was pretty excited to see Turkish subtitles and hear some words in English, so I sat up a little taller in my chair. The movie was actually shot in India with the language a combination of Hindi and English so it was fairly understandable. ( Funny thing though...The father seemed to do most of his swearing in English...) Between the language, the good music, and the good acting I was able to understand enough of the movie to be wiping away happy tears at the end

Basically, the story is about a young boy who struggled in school, got very poor grades, came from a very successful, competitive family, and was eventually shipped to a boarding school to "gain some discipline." Luckily for the boy, a loving art teacher recognized dyslexia, spent extra time helping him and encouraging his abilities in art, and helped him gain admittance into an art high school where I'm sure the boy had great success.

The down side to a movie like this is that I feel guilty about my tough week with second grade. Could I have done more? The upside to a movie like this is that it lasted 2 1/2 hours and was good enough to call it my " Friday night date movie" ...(Eric is back in Saudi) so it didn't feel like a staff meeting...