Meet Alex, Kate and little Eloise. Our new bouncy, bubbling fun family.

They were my very kind and generous hosts for a whole week. I had a lot of fun with them and not necessarily related to getting to see Savannah for I was there to get to know Alex’s new wife and baby daughter!

Alex who I met at my first year at Teesside doing Computer Animation had decided he didn’t like the course in England and chose to go to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) instead to do Illustration. The SCAD workload is really quite something, whereas in Teesside we had all semester to complete about 5-7 projects to do from our 5 modules, at SCAD it was more like 2 projects every week, yes they were smaller projects but they still required many hours a day to finish them in time before you get the next project. No slacking here!

Alex certainly stuck to this regime and would for most of the day be at his desk drawing. Therefore I left him alone for most of my stay and hung out with Kate and Eloise.

We took some walks around the local neighbourhood of Savannah which was very pleasant.

Some example Savannah Architecture

There were some walks in the park, the weather was fantastic, it still shocked me not having to wear anything more than a T-shirt, in November! (I’m sure I’m repeating myself there).

I admire a fountain in the Park

This park fountain has been the setting of quite a few scenes in movies. I’m sure it gets a lot of use from the SCAD film students too.

Kate pushed Eloise in a pram as we prowled the rather scenic streets of Savannah. Eloise isn’t quite yet 1 yet at 10 months but she babbled away happily for much of the time, I wandered what she was trying to say or convey.

Kate is a lot of fun to be with, she’s a pretty young girl and has a great smile. She’s one of those fashion fiends and quite conscious of her self-image. She needn’t worry about such things so much for her image was fine and people look for more than that in friends and close loved ones. 😀

It amused me when she asked if her hair was alright when we sat waiting outside a SCAD building for Alex to finish his class. Kate apologised for asking when I told her that she looked perfect, Kate turned out to be the most apologetic person I’ve ever met, she says sorry to just about everything. Despite my chiding that she needn’t apologise so much to me, she apologised about the apologising and then I new this to be a lost cause! Hehe. I love peoples quirky character traits.

In front of me there was a statement scrawled on the back of a signpost.

A message on the sign-post

I pointed out to Kate that the message has been my own personal motto for a long time now. She chuckled and tended to Eloises’ gurgles. I wondered what kind of person would feel so inclined to spread our motto there.

Alex emerged after a while with some friends, one of whom was a neighbour from across the street. A lot of students were living on the same road even though the SCAD campus is very dispersed.

SCAD friends on campus, the Wilsons on the right.

Much of my time was spent… relaxing, keeping an eye on the baby, playing Story mode in Soul Caliber II and taking some small walks. I continued to meet friends of Kate and Alex, they were mostly SCAD students and lived close by. Somewhere along the way I got a new haircut too, perhaps eager to not let Kate and her pristine hair show me up or something. It turned out quite well, at least it was all out of my eyes again, have a click for the full picture:

Le cut ‘n trim

Oh yes and I went shopping to the mall to do some research about cell phones and picked up a couple new CDs along the way. (Air – Moon Safari mmm light electronica and gypsy jazz: Django Reinhart ) The housemate who lived downstairs took us in her car. She is a nice young lady too, her name was Meryll and she was a film student at SCAD. That very same night, she set-up lights and camera to do a little shoot for her latest SCAD project.

The subjects of the shoot were Kate and another lad involved with the film project whose name escapes me.

Meryll set-up everything in the living room, it surprised me just how much lighting was required, it took a while to put up.

The family congregate and Meryll gets heavy duty with the equipment

After all the setting up, Kate did some little rehearsals and then was ready to start shooting. Alex even was enthralled enough to want a go filming and stopped his Soul Caliber fight.

The actors warm up, literally, under the lights.

Alex proves his photography mettle.

After filming, it’s back to the Xbox.

I spent a few more days generally relaxing and trying to help out around the house. It’s not easy to just go into someones house and help out though because you don’t know their routine and where things go, however I had enough time in Savannah to get the gist of somethings but another problem was that Kate was pretty intent on being a good housewife and thus wouldn’t really give me anything to do when I asked her! Anyhow, I still walked her to the supermarket to do some grocery shopping occasionally and paid for it once when she forgot her credit card.

Pretty soon it was time to move on and plan my next stop down in Florida. It was decided that I would get an Amtrak train to Bradenton FL. on the eve of my birthday, Nov 6th. No apparent reason, just that the Amtrak train arrives in Savannah at 3:45am and so I stayed up and planned to sleep on the train.

Just getting cozy and napping on the sofa to prepare myself, when there was a bang from outside the living room, Alex left to see what it was and came back chuckling. I pondered and then dozed back to a nap.

Then there was a late dinner and we watched a bit of TV, then it went all quiet. Alex and Kate disappeared momentarily, before there was another noise and what seemed like the whole neighbourhood crashed into the living room amidst a shower of balloons and shouting ‘surprise!’

Oooh, a surprise party! I haven’t had one of those since.. well erm, ever. Although thinking back to it, Alex did something similar for my birthday at University where everyone crashed into my room to give me a big card signed by all the hallmates… Ahh, I should have known, you little devil Wiggy 😉

Some of the neighbourhood crashing to living room for my party.

There were balloons, smiling faces and a chocolate chip cookie cake! (Making sense now why Kate had asked me if I liked chocolate chip cookies before).

My cookie cake! Oh and Meryll in the black top.

Mmmm, chocolate chip cookie cake.

It was a nice evening and I really appreciated the effort that Alex and Kate had gone to try and make a little special moment for me on my travels. In all honesty I wasn’t expecting any kind of celebration, but I got one!

So I wish to really thank my Savannah hosts, Alex, Kate and little Eloise! It was really good fun.

A taxi came to pick me up and off I went to Savannah station to resume my journey down to Florida.. More to come!