Good afternoon from a Dave who is back in Phnom Penh! I returned this morning from my stint in the absolute back of beyond, helping out with the English teaching at an organisation called the ETO - Educational Training Organisation - in the middle of the countryside in the Takeo Province of Cambodia. I thoroughly enjoyed the teaching - just three classes a day of about an hour to an hour and a half - two of them with kids aged from 5 to 12...and abilities to match, and another for the older students, where the youngest was 17 I think, and the oldest 30. The ETO was set up by a guy named Chum - yet another Cambodian with an impressive story to tell: He lost his father to a few bullets from Khmer Rouge soldiers at the end of the 70s, and one of his brothers to a few more, just two minutes later as he was chasing down the road after the KR jeep, begging for his father's body so the family could bury him. He was then conscripted into the army at gun point, while he was at school, without a chance to inform his mother of why he would not be home that evening, or any evening for the next four years. Four years on, trying to get to a stream for some much needed drinking water up in the mountains, he had his leg blown off by a landmine, and was discharged to a hospital. He then eventually went back to his home town and managed to convince his mother that the one-legged, long-haired man leaning on a stick in front of her was truly her son. After working back in the rice fields for a few years, he moved to Phnom Penh where he slept rough for another 4 years, working as a bicycle taxi man, earning enough money to buy a blackboard and some chalk, then he went home and started teaching English to the children of the countryside for free. The ETO has grown and grown since then, although still struggles to buy the board markers and the notebooks for the kids, and especially needs volunteers to help teach its increasing numbers of students, which was where I came in. I was paying $6 a night for the accommodation and three meals a day - sleeping on the bamboo floor at Mr. Chum's father-in-law's home, showering out of a bucket in the outhouse (money for which was donated by a previous volunteer), and eating by candlelight at night since there was no electricity to be found within 20 miles of the village! They did have batteries however, and it seemed that most places owned a stereo of sorts, so my 30 minute morning bike ride to the Pagoda where I was teaching was provided with an interesting Cambodian folk-music soundtrack - something I won't be forgetting for a while! The food was noodles for breakfast, rice and noodles for lunch, and rice with fish or maybe even chicken for dinner. My most interesting dish, I found out after I'd eaten it, was Sour Frog Soup. I didn't ask for seconds. The family, the students and the entire community of the area I was staying in were seemingly perpetually amazed by the 'barang' (foreigner) in their midst, and whenever I cycled anywhere, I would be lucky to go 60 seconds without a chorus of "Hello! What's your name?" filtering through the paddy fields or coming at me from a hammock strung up under one of the bamboo huts. Unfortunately, this was as advanced as the level of English got away from the students, so my answers would fall on the same uncomprehending ears day after day - and yet this would not deter them! Everybody was also tremendously friendly, and every face would break into the broadest of grins if I so much as twitched the corners of my mouth in its direction - something you don't see happening in London all that often. It was incredible to experience these smiles amidst such incredible poverty - no money to buy a 25 US cents notebook, or $1 worth of medecine, and yet working from 5am to 6pm everyday. Cor blimey eh? I'll get on the case with uploading the photos soon - the photos of the sunsets I saw every day as I rode home after the 4:30 lesson do not do the panorama justice, but you'll just have to try and imagine it for yourselves. I hope you're all well, sorry if this is too long again! I know many of you will not be able to, and forgive me for mentioning it, but if anybody does feel that they can donate any amount of money to the ETO or sponsor a student, then I can give you the contact details - there's no shortage of need! I'll be heading to Vietnam pretty soon, although it seems that my old flatmate Dave is no longer going to be able to make it to meet me in Thailand...maybe we'll choose another exotic destination. Be good, thanks for your emails and for reading these updates! xxxxxx