riding a new bike

This evening, I tried something new.
I went to see "Wadjda", a Saudi Arabian movie.
That's not really the 'something new' I was talking about. I go to foreign films as often as I can and have done so for most of my life.
This time, though, I watched the film with a new group in town, a group that tries to show good films worth discussion, a group that offers a free forum for that discussion.
How very nice!
I found it on meetup.com, a site that some of my NK! friends have been using. I haven't noticed that any of them are yet in this group, but that's okay. One of the women at AMUMC, Nanci, is a member.
In case you're wondering, the website is not a place for sexual hook-ups, though I am sure that does occur, especially with the pub-crawling groups. I'm not interested in that just now.
This group promised coffee and caffeinated beverages and the company of like-minded folk. Called JAVAFLIX SAVANNAH, it's located near Forsyth Park, so finding a parking spot wasn't a hassle. What a relief!
According to the signup list for the group tonight, there were going to be nine people in attendance. Good! Not too many new names and faces to get to know!
Only one of those people actually showed up, and that was the group organizer, Patrick. He was running a tad late, arriving when I did. He had in tow a young man named JT (John Thomas, as it turned out), a parishioner of his church. That made a party of three, with two of us not even on the original list.
For both myself and JT, this was our first time there.
Patrick set about making us feel welcome from the very start. We even each had our own bags of freshly popped popcorn! We settled in on the couch and comfy chairs and watched, on the big-screen television, as the story of a ten-year-old Saudi girl unfolded.
She wanted a bicycle, but girls weren't supposed to have them. Only boys could. Still, she found one she really liked and the shop owner was willing to sell it to her. But how to get the money? A contest at the school was the answer to her prayers, a test of her knowledge of the Koran.
A test she won, by the way.
She was not given the prize money. When she had told the judge why she wanted the money, the judge had refused to give it to her, saying they money would be donated to a charity in her name, instead.
Wadjda's mother bought her the bike.
Very nice movie!
After refreshing our beverages, we talked about the characters, the plot, the cinematography. We voted on the films available for the following month. Then we all helped clean up and went our separate ways into the Saturday night.
I look forward to more of these meetings.
Definitely something new!