Teresa Coates, a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon, is busy these days: writing for local newspapers, working at a K-12 school in the Special Needs department and raising her two children, a 5th-grader and a high school sophomore.

In late 2006 Teresa and her kids went to Vietnam to volunteer at several orphanages in Tam Ky, Quang Nam for two months and inadvertently fell in love with the people, food and culture in that small corner of the world. They stayed for another four and a half months, traveling the country between Teresa´s teaching responsibilities at Hong Duc University in Thanh Hoa.

She is the writer and designer of Vietnam With Kids, a site for families interested in traveling to Vietnam for adoption, volunteering, working or as a vacation destination.

Any spare time she can find is spent writing her travel memoir and plotting her family´s return to Asia. You can read more at teresacoates.com.

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