Still Stuffed

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  My honey and I went to visit his brother's family at their new home in Lafayette, Louisiana.  It may not be as exotic as where arduous spent her Thanksgiving, but different enough.  We don't exactly have swamps up here. 

While there, we of course treated ourselves to some etouffee, gumbo and sushi.  (Sushi?  Yes, we figured it would be really fresh, more so than we get in the midwest.  I didn't say so at the time, but it wasn't any better than anything I've had here at home).  We also took in some of the local sights, including Breaux Bridge and Vermilionville.  Thanksgiving dinner was spent with the in-law's family, and featured highlights of sweet potatoes with chevre and a blue ribbon-winning apple and cranberry pie, followed by a couple games of Skip-Bo.

David's sister-in-law gave us an earful about the heartbreaking conditions of the Louisiana public school system.  She taught in public school there for a short time before transferring to a Catholic school.  The words she used to describe the difference between the public and private school conditions were: "like a caste system."   Apparently all the families with money send their kids to Catholic school, and the families that can't afford it settle for public school.  But the public schools are as bad (and according to her, even worse) than what we hear about inner-city schools.  While there, David's sister-in-law said she spent most of her time disciplining students and hardly got any teaching accomplished.  She contracted asthma while working in the dirty, dusty conditions at the school.  Students are not given SAT or ACT tests because the schools don't want the parents to know how badly their children are doing.  Gifted students from Louisiana who have moved to schools up north have been put in remedial classes.  From what we can tell, no one makes a fuss about the schools because just about all those kids will have jobs, even if they don't finish high school - they will go to work on the numerous oil rigs in the gulf area.

Her stories made me very thankful that I grew up and live in a state where one can go to public school and get a good education!  It did make me sad for all those kids, though.  Clearly No Child Left Behind has done absolutely nothing to help them and is a law incapable of helping kids and school systems in this kind of situation.  

But I have been tagged by arduous, and must respond.  

1. The colors I wear most often (not including blue jeans) are green, purple, black and brown.

2. My parents still live in the same house I grew up in.

3. I tried to feed a deer a rock when I was about 1 1/2 (yes, there is a picture).

4. My mom called me the "mohawk chipmunk" when I was a baby.

5. I love to play games - board games, card games, anything.  I'm currently obsessed with Scrabulous on Facebook.

6. My cat is cuter than yours and probably more annoying.

7. I desperately want to go to Ireland but am afraid I'll never be able to afford it.

And now I'm tagging Dave Knave, Liz, rage-ahol, David, and John.

(7 people?  Who has time to read 7 people's blogs?)

Rules:

1- Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.

2- Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.

3- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

4- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.