Grace International School

We stayed at the Lotus hotel over the weeked after the first conference and on Monday we went over to Marge Smalley's place, where we stayed for the next conference. GIS is a school for Mk's that started small and is now very impressive! They bought (or got a very long lease) the huge facility built as the recreation center for an elite subdivision (World Club) on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. It has an amazing pool, weight room and other stuff, and they turned it into a school. I have some pictures here.

This conference was for the homeschooling family associated with Grace. Melanie Reimer, supported by Plymouth Congregational in Whittier, is with New Tribes and is in charge of their home school program. She goes and visits the families in their remote locations, taking library books, resources and encouragement. Once a year she brings them all in for this conference to test the kids and encourage the moms. I think there were between 30-35 parents at the conference. I spoke twice on Raising Adults and Making Home Schooling work for Your Family. I got to know a few of the ladies, but really didn't see much of the homeschooled kids. We ate breakfast at Marge's, had lunch at the school and did different things for supper. I walked from Marge's neat little apartment to school and back, sometimes twice a day. Good for me!

It was so nice to see Marge again and spend time with her! Dad did some electrical work to make things a bit easier and figured out a way she could not only play the music on her iPod through the TV, but also watch the Monk episodes she had on her iPod on the TV screen as well! We also got to watch a couple episodes and that was really fun! While there, the charger for our laptop died, so the rest of our time away from home was computer-free, except when we checked mail at an internet cafe.