Tina in Thailand

After about 24 hours in transit (in airports and on airplanes), I made it from Honolulu to Bangkok on Wednesday. Sleeping for three hours and then waking for three hours through the long flights helped me to avoid serious jetlag.  Thursday morning I met my Thai tutor, Narisa. She has been helping me the past year to speak more like Thai people and less "like the Bible." An English equivalent would be that my speech is like the King James Version rather than the New International Version. She gave me a few presents, one of which was a bunch of leaves from her garden that is supposed to help grandmothers look like young ladies again (it had a name to that effect).  View from the 8th floor of Salaya One Residences The apartment I am living in is nice - three separate rooms divided by glass doors. The amazing thing is there is a mini-split AC unit in the living room and one in the bedroom! This is so different from when I lived here 40 years ago when it was extremely rare to have...

Although I left Utah this past Tuesday, I am not yet in Thailand! These past several days I have been with two of my BYU colleagues and 9 students presenting at the Council for Exceptional Children's Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities 25th International Conference. It was the largest conference yet, with over 900 registrants and 600 presentations. The students did an AMAZING job presenting their research to professors, practitioners, and graduate students (even though some of our students are undergraduates). They were engaging, informative, and articulate! I'm so proud of them. We learned a lot at the conference and have left with greater knowledge and skills to better serve diverse students with disabilities and their families. We presented the  Dolly Gray Children's Literature Award  at the opening session. This biennial award recognizes the top picture book and chapter book that characterizes an individual with autism or other developmental disabilitie...