It's kind of strange having a "job" again for a few weeks. It's good though as I always need to to have something to do. Today was my first official day as a teacher. It went quite well. Loads of randoms turned up to Tania and I's university class, so we had 16 students in our class, there were only four last week! Obviously they heard about the hot new teachers on the block. :) I'm getting to know the individual students a bit better now. I know all my kiddie class, although tomorrow the classes are moving around so I'm going to have some new people and more names to learn. At the moment I have Dalin, Sreymom, Vanna, Tree and Phanith in my class, so it's not very big, but I expect to have lots more tomorrow. Today we wrote a story and then read Harry Potter, which is a huge hit as they've watched the films and Harry Potter craze has obviously made it to SE Asia too. Notice how all my lessons are revolving around books and stories...and drawing pictures. I'm also getting better at discipline. I actually raised my voice today would you believe. I also pretended to be an owl by flapping round the classroom. And I'm getting better at explaining things without using more complicated words, sort of. "Suggest means imply" - maybe not.

The whole volunteering thing is really badly organised though. There are three of us at CCOLT (and there were six last week) to 26 kids. There there are two other projects with around 50 kids in each, and far fewer resources, and there's one volunteer in each. Personally I'd rather be helping out somewhere like that, though I'm enjoying where I am, and our kids obviously need help. It's just that the others need more help! I really like what I'm doing, and I can empathise with the kids. I could definitely do this for longer, I'd be happy doing this in my old life and being able to see my friends and go to the gym etc, but I'm really not sure if I'd like to live in Cambodia. The people running the projects really mean well but sometimes they widely miss the mark. There are only men in charge at CCOLT, so they're not very good at being mumsy and relating to the girls. Mr Sokhun the headteacher, is compiling a SWOT analysis of every child in English (he was obviously shown this by a volunteer!). He tells me about the children, then I translate it into good English and write it down. It's so sad though as he'll say a girl is moody and looks sad, "she is not smiley" or "she is proud, she is standoffish around people" and then he'll say "how can we fix this, we punish her? we tell her she will be alone if she doesn't make friends? how we punish her?" and I'm like "no, she needs someone to talk to, she's sad and unhappy, and she finds it hard to trust people because she was abandoned by her parents, you can't punish her for being unhappy", and Mr Sokhun will say "oh!". You can only do little bits at a time. Although the girl who is "stubborn, sulky and standoffish, holds a grudge", really likes me and always wants to talk to me. :) This girl is so funny. She said to me last week "you are not sexy". Thank you. I think she meant I didn't wear slutty clothes as "sexy" was bad to her. Which is good as she's only 13. She's very sensible as she's going to go to university and get a job before she thinks about getting a husband. I've told her this is a good philosophy, boys are more hassle than they're worth.

Speaking of which, we're having "healthcare" next week, which will include "hygiene for girls" and the birds and the bees. Aids is a really big problem here. There is a restaurant which employs street kids and teaches them hospitality skills, and they have a big bowl of condoms in the toilet. I took a wad of them. "They're for the kids!" I protested when I got a funny look from one of the other volunteers.

We had an extra evening class tonight with random people from the surrounding area who come to learn English for free. There are about 30 people in a class

Saturday we went to the Killing Fields and S21 Prison. It was really horrific. Travelling is making me realise how little I know about the world and history. If I hadn't come to Cambodia I probably wouldn't have learnt about this. I can't believe a country can go through what Cambodia has gone through and everyone is still smiling. I can't get my head around the fact that only 30 years ago Phnom Penh was a ghost-town save for the bosses of the Khmer Rouge and the prisons, that all the intelligent people and their families were rounded up and tortured and killed in the most barbaric way. That the rest were sent to live in the countryside and work for 16 hours a day on 85grams of rice, and if they "disobeyed" in any way they were sent to prison for more torturing before being taken to the Killing Fields to be shot, if they were lucky. Each of the 20,000 inmates of S21 Prison was photographed when they went inside. Many of these were children. The look in their eyes will haunt me for a long time. Of 20,000 inmates, 7 survived. And this is only Phnom Penh, in total 2 million people were killed over the Khmer Rogue's four year reign.

There's a man who runs a restaurant up the road, Mama's. The food is really good and really cheap btw. He studied in France as an archaeologist and got scholarships all the way to PhD level. After working as a professor for two years in Cambodia he had to give this up because he wasn't paid enough, and effectively become a waiter. He has three kids. His business is really successful as he's so highly educated, but after so many years of learning it's basically worthless.

We went out at the weekend to this bar (where I went dancing for the first time in three months and had a very good substitute dance partner in the form of Anna the Portuguese lady). We saw this really old Western guy (like, 80) with these four Cambodia girls who must have been younger than me. Anna took them away and started dancing with them, and called the old guy a "pig" and told him to go away (she's cool). She talked to them and they told her they were orphans, they couldn't get a job because they had no contacts and even if they worked they didn't make enough money. They were well aware of what they were doing but there was no other way for them to survive. He kissed one and she looked like she was going to be sick, and he left with his arms round all four of them. Yeah, we were staring. He didn't look the least bit abashed. It really brings it home that that could be our orphans in five, ten years time, though I guess ours are the lucky ones.

Well, I'd better go and plan my lessons for tomorrow and do my very very little bit to help Cambodia to get back on its feet.