I spent today teaching with Vanak (the one & only English teacher at the school) and had a great time teaching the children 'opposites' ie. long/short, up/down etc, and playing Bingo (with letters & numbers). I'd bought a bag of things from the local market in Siem Reap (pencils, hair bobbles, erasers etc) to use as prizes for the Bingo winners. A new volunteer started today - Ang - a guy from North Carolina whose mother was Khmer (she died when he was y...

Today was a National Holiday - the anniversary of when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 to stop the Khmer Rouge regime. Although a National Holiday, many people do not celebrate it as it is a Communist holiday and not everyone in Cambodia wishes to be ruled by a Communist Government. Anyway, it meant that the school was closed, so I went out for the day with my tuk-tuk driver (Sara) and one of the guides I met on New Years' Eve (Manay). He's a great guide...

Had a bit of a lie-in this morning - my arms ache from all the painting :0) - and then headed out to the Cambodian Landmine Museum near Banteay Srei. Craig and I visited the old facility in 2006 and the new last November, but Laura had never been so we jumped in a tuk-tuk (we have a fabulous driver called Sara who really looks after us) and took the 1-hour journey out to the museum. The centre was established by a local man called Aki Ra, who was a child soldi...

Set off at 6am for a half day at the school. Children here go to school on a Saturday until 11am. Spent the first hour playing with the children before going into the English class. I'd taken a few little bouncy balls with me and they loved them. You may remember them - they are the balls which 'rocket' when you bounce them - and I had about 30 children tearing up and down the field, rolling in the dust, and piling on top of each other like a rugby scrum. I sudde...

Another day at the school, splitting my time between painting and being a teaching assistant. The children are starting to get to know me now - they are quite shy at first but when they realise that you aren't going to disappear the next day (as many people do), they start to open up to you. When we arrive in the car they run up to us waving & smiling and they now feel comfortable in front of the camera, usually falling over one another to see the screen. I'm...