RSO, here we come!

Ready to go and waiting for our flight - it would take close to 30 hours from the time we took off until we landed in Chennai, India.

Sleeping on the looong flight.

When we arrived in Chennai, every single passenger had to have their temperature taken.

They were checking for Swine Flu. Here Dr. Scott gets his checked.

Next is Sophie! (It's a good thing they wiped off that ear checker thing with a dry piece of cotton in between each passenger! Welcome to India!)

All of our loot that we brought with us. A good portion of it was dental equipment (purchased with the money raised by David Archuleta and his fans!).

Our flight got in around midnight so instead of taking the long drive to RSO that night we stayed in a hotel in Chennai. When we woke up I looked out our hotel window and this is what I saw. Our very first look at India in the daylight. I wondered on which planet we had landed.


Before taking off to RSO we took some rick-shaw rides to church in Chennai. Holy COW! That was an experience! There are no traffic laws in India (they say there are but NO ONE follows them and no one cares that no one follows them!). Apparently stop lights and stop signs are only a suggestion, not mandatory. The best way I can describe our experience on the rick-shaws is this: think of the video game "Frogger" except with real cars and trucks. We were the frog. I honestly can't believe we didn't die.

Outside of the church. What a great experience we had there.

(Ya gotta love our shiny skin. Yes, it was HOT and HUMID! This is southern India in July, people!)

On the bus and on our way (finally) to Rising Star Outreach!

A cow in the road. The first of many, MANY livestock we would encounter in the roads - cows, pigs, elephants, camels, goats, etc, etc. (Not to mention children running around in the traffic knocking on our windows begging for food and money.)

I am inside the RSO bus taking a picture out of the window. We often saw truck loads carrying people, usually women, in the back. These beautiful Indian women were pretty happy to have our attention!

We are finally here!! It's hard to believe after all this time we are finally at Rising Star Outreach with the children! They were so happy to see our bus pull up. They ran out to greet us. I cried.

These sweet little girls quickly made some "diamond rings" out of palm leaves to welcome us. Here they are putting the rings on our fingers.

In front of the school - Perry School for Rising Stars.

This is one of the three water wells at RSO. This one was running out of water so they were digging it deeper (with the help of some dynamite!). You can see the hose and pump that go down into it.

Our dental team (plus a few of the children) in front of the girl's hostel. The boy's hostel is next door. The children live here and go to school just a 2 minute walk down the road.

Me in the village just outside the RSO property. I was so excited when we drove by this sign for the first time. I couldn't believe we were actually here. Yes, I cried of course!

We set up our dental clinic in a storage room in the boy's hostel. Lance made this awesome sign to welcome the kids! (It says "We cater to cowards,"We accept most insurances," "Free bleaching for life." I don't think the kids really appreciated/understood the humor!)

We are all set up and ready to see our first patients in the morning!