Meeting people in Savannah

"Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. ". My tribute to the Beatles. But it's also very close to how morning went. 7:00 am - wake up, throw on some clothes, start the kettle, take Kizmet for a walk 7:05 - walking Kizmet around the campground. This particular campgroun is a converted farm. There are a number of out buildings, a couple of ponds, a swimming pool and a park. One of the outbuildings seems like it might have been a summer home at one point and is now the "clubhouse" with a TV, couch, a couple of old kitchen tables, and a pool table. It feels a lot like someone's cabin. There is also a bungalow that is being used as the main office and that has a small gym (was a bedroom), a kitchen, and a living room. I watched the Monday Night Football game in the living room. There is still a horse paddock with a few horses in it and a large farm house on the property. A good length of farm roads to walk the dog along. 7:20 - back from our walk. Kettle is boiling. Put on the tea to steep and grabbed a piece of leftover quiche to eat. 8:45 where does the time go? It seems to fly by when I'm on the computer. I spent roughly 20 minutes blogging then I went back to looking at campsites. Yesterday, I spent a good hour trying to find the perfect spot in northeast Florida. Today, I was doing some research on campsites at or near New Orleans. 9:00 - woke the kids up so that they could get ready to head out to the Savannah Civic Centre where we are volunteering at an event for single working women. 9:30 - after doing some kitchen clean up and making lattes for Sonya and myself, we headed off to Savannah. We arrived 20 minutes later at the Civic Centre and proceeded to the 3rd floor ballroom where we signed up and met the lady who organized the event. 10-2pm - we helped out at the event. The event was put on by a group of people who are trying to help single working mom's in Savannah improve their situation in life. There were some 30+ mom's who attended with their 80+ children. Before all of the guests arrived, all of the volunteers helped to setup the ballroom: placing bows on chairs, laying out the food and toys that would be passed out to the families and placing table cloths and decorations on the tables. While we were helping to setup we met a very interesting chap from Philadelphia. He had moved down to Savannah some 15 years prior and is an honest-to-goodness story teller. He tells stories that have been passed down through the Gullah people. These are descendants of black slaves that live in the region and who speak a dialect that is influenced by the Caribbean, places like Barbados and Jamaica, as well as West and Central Africa. One person (a tour guide at the Boone Plantation that we visited in South Carolina) told us that Gullah is a derivative that came from the word "Angola", as in "ang-Gullah". Anyway, this story teller was an extremely interesting and exceedingly friendly man. I had a great time chatting with him. After everything was set up and people had arrived, there was a number of speeches by the organizers, their pastor, the story teller, and an 18-year old beauty queen (I believe her title is "Miss Black Savannah"). The master of ceremonies was an anchor for the local news station. After the speeches, the mom's were brought to one side of the hall and the kids were seated at round tables at the other end. While the women provided the organizers with information along the lines of their biggest challenges and their goals for 2016, the kids and some of us volunteers were entertained by the story teller.

After that it was lunch time. One of the organizers is a gentleman who runs an Outback Stakehouse and his restaurant provided the food. Even the volunteers got to have a great meal. After lunch, the kids received toys and the mom's received some groceries to take with them. I spent some time running back and forth between the hall and the parking lot, helping a few of the families carry their goodies back to their vehicles. All in all, it was a great event and rather a piece of cake, as volunteering goes. Sonya spent half the time holding a beautiful little baby while the baby's mom got a makeover (they offered them at the event) and had lunch with her three older one. I'm glad that we took the time to participate. 2:30 - back at the trailer and out walking with Kizmet. The rest of the afternoon was rather uneventful. Sonya and I picked up some groceries, we had diner, and I watched a show (Flash) with the kids.