Incredible experiences the past two days

The past few days have been busy, starting with the Opening Ceremony on Friday at the pier in Nha Trang. It was extremely gracious and beautiful. To see our Commodore and Captains sitting at the same table with the Chairwoman of the People's Party and the Ministry of Defense officials was absolutely incredible. It was a small group that got to witness this special event. I took some video, hope it turned out. The best part was walking through the receiving line and shaking hands with the representatives from Vietnam. When I told this Vietnamese military official that I was a nurse from San Diego State University he broke out in a big smile and said he was the Director of the Military Medical Division and shook my hand vigorously. To see him smile was a big win for me.

Yesterday I got to work at one of the medical sites set up at a school in Nha Trang. It again was incredible! Working side by side with the Vietnamese nurses and doctors was such a great experience. These clinics are hot, crowded, there's a language barrier and all kinds of unfamiliar things but it is worth every bit of it. We saw over 400 patients yesterday. The two nurses I worked with were excellent. Education seems to be a high priority here. I learned a few phrases in Vietnamese, and had the best time with them. So many stories to tell. The guy with the "I'm proud to be an American" T-shirt on, the elderly man whose hands were messed up from the war, the elderly women who would just light up if you gave them a smile. I was helping this one elderly woman through the crowd to the next station and the other elderly women sitting on their heels waiting all smiled and exclaimed, reached out to me or bowed, just because I was showing a little respect to one of their own.
I then went down and helped the East Meets West Foundation doing a dental workshop. They had a huge crowd. Capt. Craft who is the only American dentist working with them introduced me to the staff and then let me teach some of the children about dental care using a big set of teeth and a big toothbrush while they watched a cartoon video about dental caries. He said I can come back and work with them again. They do incredible work.
Operation Smile are doing tons of cleft lip surgeries, we have 62 pediatric patients on board tonight, the ward is totally full. Plus they have their mothers and some family with them, so we have a full house tonight. I went down to the receiving area and there were babies crawling all over the place.
Tomorrow I'm going to visit some of the Buddhist temples and hope to get to the market to see what they have. I hope to post more pictures but again the bandwith is so slow it's takes a long time to download just one.