Looks like these three are really enjoying dinner!
Hmm - not sure what Nancy is saying! But maybe she is saying" don't mess with my wine!"
Helmut, Min Min and Rosemary at dinner in the hotel restaurant. There is not any place else to eat. But the food is fine here.
Some maps to give you an idea of where we are. We are right at the 17th parallel.
The Đa Krông Bridge.
Beautiful land but such rough terrain and, many areas may still contain land mines. 
Warren taking movies - of the team?
The Dental Team in Quang Tri. And some children!
Paul with some children. Note how he is dressed - and how the children are dressed. We were cold and we had coats. Many of the children did NOT have coats.
Huong in one of the school rooms.
Paul and the children coloring. Note that they are either standing at tables or kneeling at chairs to color. And no complaining. That has been one of the nicest things about this trip. No one complains about any of the hardships. 
Dental machines.
Dental Machines
Sewing up a foot laceration. Wow - I am impressed! And we gave him antibiotics. The dirt here is so dirty because the animals are living in the same dirt the kids play in. And so many children only have sandals or just go bare foot. So, an open cut on the feet is dangerous.
Lunch break - and Tracy showing Jeff her pictures.
Dr. Pierre and Lel
Hmm - Warren as a Dental Assistant. Interesting!
Kevin and Dr. Helmut with a patient.
The sterilization room.
Huong leading the children.
Mong Hang with the little girl who cried - after her visit with the Dentist.
In the US she would get tied to a board by some dentists - here she had people holding her and talking nicely to her. Or she might get some sedation at home - but we obviously can't do here.
She is not happy but she finally agreed to be seen.
Teresa checking out teeth. Look at how we are dressed and at how the children are dressed. We were all really cold here and the children just did not have warm clothes. It was only in the 60's but so damp.
This was a rowdier group of children than the previous days.
The Dental Room.
Setting up more trays for more children to be seen by the dentists.
This is the only child who really put up a fuss about being seen. Initially she refused but she finally gave in. She cried through the whole procedure, however, and it took several people to help with her.
A house across from the health department.
The vehicle on the right is an ambulance. Strange. 
Some of the women practicing one of their traditional dances.
The little boy from the building next to the health department. 
Practicing feeling the position of the baby - butt verses head. One of the manikins is under her coat.
Most of the women were taking notes on and off throughout the 3 days of lecture.
Sabina and manikin - imitating a pregnant woman!
The women sitting together on the chairs - more women than chairs.
Stick brooms by the bathrooms. Most of the brooms we have seen are similar to this.
A young mother with her baby. She is so beautiful.
Almost the entire village of women and children walked us to the van.
Children watching us from a window in their home.
The animals live under and next to the houses.
The pigs belonging to the woman who let us visit her house.
TH in the house, looking out - and down. Between the fire inside and the open doors and windows it sure seems like there are a lot of accidents waiting to happen.
Inside the house, where our hostess kindly brought us water to drink.
The front porch/entrance of the house.
A TV but no running water, no toilet or any sewage system and the only heat is from the open cooking fire.
The fireplace in the back room of the two room house. This is also the sleeping room.
Pictures of her children. Very fancy professional pictures.
Dallas and our hostess.
Looking down from the house at TH and some of the villagers.
The house we visited.
His left eye is either missing or quite diseased.
Could this be a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig?
Harriet with some of the children.
Maddy with some of the children.
Nancy with some of the children.
The boy on the right has very bad crossed eyes. He really needs to see an opthamologist. But, we have not seen any children with glasses here.
TH with some of the children.
The villagers coming out to watch us and follow us.
The 4 year old takes care of the baby. The baby has no pants on. The Grandmother (or maybe great Grandmother, I'm not sure) can't stand up straight. There is very little milk here and women do not take calcium supplements, so osteoporosis is bad. Dallas taught nutrition and about foods high in calcium. 
Dallas and one of the village women.
Due to the mud, we had to walk in to the village - not far at all.
Visiting the little village of 127 people. All of the men were out cutting wood. They sell the wood to make money.
The house behind the Public Health Facility.
The house behind the Public Health Facility.
Two of the puppies at the Public Health Facility.
Our students - lay midwives.
Thuy with one of the students. If the students answered the nutrition question correctly, they won a tangerine. They all had the correct answers.
Thuy Dallas and the Nutrition questions.
The all important English-Vietnamese Medical Dictionary.
Students in the classroom.
People in the apartment next to the Health Department. The little boy says 'hi' and 'bye' and waves. Our bathroom is right next to their porch.
A home behind the Public Health Facility.
The bathroom is the little yellow building on the left.
Our class. Note how the women are sharing the chairs as we do not have enough for each to have their own chair.
Warren & Kevin. Kevin is from Philadelphia.
Paul and Dental Team Members at the hotel waiting for everyone to get ready so we can get on the bus and drive out for work..
Paul - from Australia. 17 years old. This has been a life changing experience for him. As it has for all of us!
Two of the dentists - Michael from Canada and Helmut from the Yukon in Canada.
The big bus. I don't know how the driver navigates the roads. But he is great! All of our drivers have been amazing.
Outside of our hotel. 
Dental Team.
The hotel did not get our scrubs washed. TH brought some that a relative had ordered for us to give away at the orphanage. So we are wearing them. Hysterical. Warren is wearing a Nerds shirt. Today the Public Health team presented more information on pregnancy, child health and hygiene. All 53 of the women came back for the seminar. They say they are learning a lot - that there is a lot of new information for them. Phi, our interpretor, is incredible. The dialect here is a little different here so that makes translating more of a challenge. The English-Vietnamese medical dictionary keeps getting pulled out as many of the words that all of us know in English are not words that our team know in Vietnamese.
It is cold and damp. All of the women sit in class with their winter coats, hats and even gloves on all day. There are not enough chairs so the women are sitting two to a chair. No one is complaining. During breaks, Jeff shows the women the pictures he has taken. They are like the little children at home - they love to see their pictures. They just sit and giggle. They also like Karaoke and spent a couple of breaks singing.
At lunch time we were taken to a local village where 127 people live. The people here are unbelievably poor. The women and children came out and followed us through the village. Everything is muddy since it has been raining. Most of the children do not have shoes. The livestock live under or next to the houses so the dirt is quite contaminated and that is where the children play. There is no running water in this village. The only heat is their cooking fire. They sleep in the room where they cook. We were invited in to one villagers house. She was so proud to show us her lovely mats on the floor and she served us water to drink. Just like mother's anywhere, she has pictures on the wall of her children. I gave her my barrette when I left. We all wished that we had brought something to give the children.
At the end of the day, some of the women started practicing a traditional dance. They are going to perform it for us tomorrow.
JFC is partnering with Global Community Service for this trip. Marcia, Rad and Tam have done an incredible job taking care of us and paving the way for our work. Check out their web site for more information. http://www.globalcommunityservice.org/.
The Dental Team was at Đakrông school today. This is near the Ai Tu Marine Corp Airfield of 1968. They saw about 200 children. More cavities today. Warren continues to be a star as he is keeping the machines running. There were two little girls at the school today that were only wearing t-shirts. No underwear. No pants. Just t-shirts. And many of the children were in school without shoes. Everyone is wishing they had brought more to give to the children. If I do this kind of trip again, I will be bringing less clothes for me and more toys and clothes for the children. Frisbees and balls bring so much pleasure to the children. It seems like the children here have never seen white people with freclkes. They kept coming up to Warren and touching his freckles.
The current incarnation of the Dakrong Bridge was built in 1975 after reunification. Just west of the main DMZ zone, the bridge was considered the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh Trail network and during the years of conflict with the United States, this access point was hotly contested. The Dakrong Bridge fell many times. Now it's a grand suspension bridge. The road to the bridge leads to the border with Laos. The Ho Chi Minh Trail is a concept, not a road. The trail was a vast network, spread across hundreds of miles of terrain extending far into the interior of Laos, a broad avenue of hundreds of kilometers of trails that brought supplies to North Vietnamese troops, by hook or by crook, usually on the backs of porters or with giant loads precariously perched on overlaid bicycles. You might call it "the path of least resistance" or the "road less bombed or occupied" really. The trail starts in Quang Tri Province, basically anything from the Dakrong Bridge south, and the Americans were constantly trying to foil the Viet Cong and General Vo Nguyen Giap's relentless end-run around the front line so as to stage attacks in the south.
The Quang Tri people are struggling in the battle between life and death. Poor farming and breeding techniques, a shortage of agricultural land and unexploded land mines have made the province suffer. In 2007 the average income per capita was US$474 a year, about 56 per cent of the national average. Known as one of the fiercest areas of conflict during the Viet Nam war, Quang Tri Province, in central Viet Nam, remains the location with the most land mines and unexploded ordnance in the entire country. End of lesson.
We came back and had dinner in the hotel. There is a liquor store right next to the hotel so we had wine in a box. Most people here sleep on a straw mat on the floor. The mats are beautiful. Those that have a bed, do not have a mattress. Just the mat on the wooden bed. Our hotel has mattresses but they are the hardest mattress that I have ever seen. Luckily we are used to a firm mattress but the ones here give a whole new meaning to the word 'firm'.
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