AERC

The first conference was the Asian Educational Resourses Consortium, and it was attended by about 160 people and over 200 in the kids program.They have all sorts of resources for the many different educational options for missionaries in Asia, books, testing, evaluations, consultations, counseling etc. They had a Presbyterian pastor from Washington DC who spoke each morning and was really excellent!! What he said was just what missionaries need to hear. The amazing thing was listening to him tell how he and his wife came alive spiritually and learned the excitment of sharing Christ with others at Explo '72! They took a busload of 47 kids, only one of which had any spiritual interest at all, from North Carolina to Dallas, and came back with an entirely different bunch of kids, all of which have gone on to make a real impact on the world since then. Wonderful to hear, especially since we were part of making Explo '72 happen.

I was one of the workshop presenters and I spoke three times. Since my topic was home schooling exclusively, many were interested! The first seminar was in one of the smaller rooms and was packed (I have a picture which I will post) and the second two were in bigger rooms and well attended. It was fun, as usual, once I got over being nervous! I think what I had to share was helpful and I had appointments with several ladies and really enjoyed encouraging them! Sounds like the ones in charge would like to have me come back and do it again sometime in the future!

We stayed at the Lotus Pang Suan Kaew (pong swan cow) Hotel, the same place I stayed for the language coaching worksop last year, and it was very nice. It is a huge complex which includes 10 stories, another conference center and a second hotel and a large, four story shopping mall. We didn't get any pictures of the hotel or our room, I am sorry to say. Our room was paid for by the conference until it was over and this included a buffet breakfast and lunch. The food was okay, Asian, but not really Thai. We were on our own for supper and enjoyed eating outside in the cheap food stalls where there is some really good Thai food.

Some interesting things we saw to eat in this open food area were crispy fried coconut worms, crickets and bamboo grubs. I should have taken pictures of those! I know the grandkids would have found that facinating! There were also lots of different fried things on sticks--very hard to tell exactly what they were since the signs were mostly all in Thai which just looks like squiggles to us.