Hi all. Just a quick check in pending more detailed reports and pics. The weather so far has been amazing. All kids and teachers are doing well and are totally enthralled by New Orleans. What an amazing city! We have deviated slightly from our schedule as posted below, but we have been busy and having a great deal of fun in the past three days. We took a fascinating plantation tour on Wednesday which took up most of the day during which we drove down the historic river rout into the hard to the Creole plantation country while our driver, a New Orleans history and French teacher gave a talk on the architecture and history of early Louisiana and the Creole plantations, stopping to tour two of the plantations themselves.
On Thursday we visited the Audubon Zoo then took a walking tour of Tulane University for the benefit of our 9th, 10th, and 11th graders who might want to think about college here in the Big Easy. We also attended the cooking class mentioned in the schedule where we collectively produced enough high quality jambalaya and gumbo to feed our entire crew dinners for the next two days (with the supplement of some garlic bread whipped up in our hostel kitchen). The cooking lesson was supplemented by a very informed lecture on the shaping of Louisiana culture from the time of the Creoles until the advent of American culture following the Louisiana purchase, a great supplement and reinforcement to the lectures we heard on the plantation tour. Then we went to Zydeco night at Rock n Bowl and had a blast Dancing and bowling and listening to traditional Louisiana music.
Here are some photos Brendan took of the Rock n Bowl visit. I realize it looks like a regular bowling alley, but there was great live band playing zydeco music, and a huge dance floor full of local dancers joined by Reed and Roy who must have danced with a dozen different women as the night wore on and the rest of us bowled. The bowling required adroit negotiation since there was a wedding party who had rented all of the lanes, but several lanes were not in use, and ultimately the group was allowed to take over two of them. A great time was had by all.
And on Friday we attended events surrounding the Tennessee Williams Festival, including an impressive and funny talk by Cokie Roberts on Women in American history focusing on her new book on the 'founding mothers.' Then we turned the kids loose in groups to continue their exploration of the French Quarter for a time, followed by yet another meal of garlic bread, gumbo, and jambalaya, until it was time to attend a fine performance of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana at the Petite Theatre on Jackson Square.
Kids are assembling blog postings and photographs of the events mentioned above to send out in future postings, so this is just to keep the curious and concerned up to date.
