Trying to make lemonade out of life's lemons--not enough sugar!

My Splash proof mask

oops

Wings of Angels Clinic

Red Hat Lady

Children from Orphange who were our patients
Taking a moment to text kids in the ward

Well, the trip we almost took to Russia; St. Petersburg and Barnaul in Siberia didn't turn out quite as productive as Guatemala. We have been planning this trip since February, putting everything together, visas, hotels, transportation, Russian airline to Siberia, etc. We were to join up with 6 dentists from Finland to do a clinic at some orphanages in Barnaul, Siberia. On the way home we were spending one day in St. Petersburg before coming home.

We took off from Sky Harbor on Tuesday. After about 45 minutes, they informed us that the landing gear was stuck and never came up so we were headed back to Phoenix. After circling for about an hour, we landed. Unfortunately, even though they could get us to Frankfurt, then to St. Petersburg, they couldn't get us there in time to catch our Russian plane to Siberia. Since it only flies twice a week, the clinic would have had one day left by the time we arrived. So we decided to try to cut some of our losses and stay home. We didn't have hotels and plans for a week in St. Petersburg and last minute arrangements are always very expensive. We were disappointed of course after all the planning and packing and arrangements. But when you get lemons, what do you do? Well, you make lemonade. So Paul decided we would go across the border to Mexico to Aqua Prieta just outside of Douglas, Arizona. There is a little clinic just across the border he goes to work in occassionally. We had a nice afternoon, stopping at Tombstone (very briefly) and then in Bisbee. Bisbee surprisingly is quite a nifty little town. We walked around, visited Antique shops, bought a couple of tablecloths for the beach and a "red hat" for me. Then we ate at a great little Mexican Restaurant. When we were almost through eating about 20 women came in that were having a book club gathering. They were discussing the book BLINK. Then we drove to Douglas and stayed in a little guesthouse in the back of the home of the lady that set up the clinic. Besides serving orphanages and poor people, it is mainly to help care for children that are severly handicapped and also serves a school for the mentally challenged. They have days that physical therapists come in and nurse practicioners for clinic check-ups. We worked for two days, not even stopping for lunch and saw 17 patients the first day with the help of a young dentist that worked for 4 hours and the next day by ourselves we did 11 patients from an orphanage. However, NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED. Just as we were finishing our last patient, at a critical point in the procedure, the front office lady yelled Paul, Paul, they hit your car. Sure enough, a young kid was going too fast, lost control of his car, and smashed into the door of Paul's beloved Tahoe. We were just thinking how nice it was going to be that we were going to be able to get on the road back home by 4:00 and stop for dinner in Bisbee. Instead we waited and waited and spend time in the police station and after getting absolutely nothing accomplished, we finally got on the road at 8:00 and home at 12:00. Now you have to have a lot of sugar to make lemonade out of those lemons. So we will get to pay our large deductible and hope our insurance company will pay for our car since we were in Mexico. We are going to go to Pine tomorrow and try to salvage a little bit of our time off. Here are a few pictures of our adventure. However, if the landing gear has to get stuck on your plane, it is certainly better to have it stuck while it is down than stuck up. I'm trying to play the GLAD GAME HERE!