No School, Some Education, and a Lot of Fun

I've mentioned here before that my youngest sister lives and works in South Korea, returning to the States once a year to visit. This year, she also brought alone her boyfriend, who hails from England. They spent a month visiting his family and friends, and are now spending a month doing the same with hers. We've been planning to spend time with them in the mountains of Tennessee next weekend with the WHOLE family, but they surprised us by asking if they could also come here to visit for a couple days, to which we readily agreed. They arrived Monday afternoon, and we've been having a great time with them. Yesterday we went to the National Air Force Museum (which, being free and pretty neat, is our go-to place with guests), and afterwards, as we were finishing up lunch, my sister politely suggested that if we needed to get any school done, they would find a way to lay low for a little while.

I laughed, and asked Drew, who was standing nearby, if he had learned anything new at the museum. When he said he did, I said, "Great! School is done." In any case, there's no chance we would waste any of our visit doing "school." It's quite true we've done not a single "school-ish" thing these past couple of days, and I hadn't previously been planning on taking two days off. But I was reminded of something I heard John Taylor Gatto say in a documentary I watched recently. He was talking about great Americans who had little or no schooling, but who had great educations. Their education came from talking with real people and having real experiences. So that's what we're claiming this week. Real people, real experiences. Yesterday Dan and Erica told us about all the countries they've visited between them, and some of their experiences therein. They talked about what they eat and do in South Korea, about their jobs and about the people they meet.

Of course, much of the time, we've just had fun. But you know what? Math is good...but these kind of memories last forever. (P.S. No toddlers were hurt in the making of this video! She was knocked down at the end, but stood up laughing.)