Hi Everyone,

Well we've managed to change the layout so it should be easier to read now.

The photos are – Rhon and I treating ourselves to a slightly up market meal after our first hectic week; a local street stall, selling what else but bananas and clothes being dried at the local laundry – so they’re going to be nice and dusty when you get them back.

Well, it’s Wednesday of our second week and things have settled down a bit. We planned our lessons for the week on Sunday and prepared all our materials so the classes ran to a reasonable pattern – nothing is totally predictable here! A big difference this week is that the weather has cooled a lot. Last week every day was around 35/36, this week it has dropped to 25/26, so that has helped. Even so we were ready for this mid-week break – it will get hot again next week. Unfortunately Rhon got the tummy bug last week and has taken 5 days to settle down again. Hopefully we won’t suffer again. We are extremely careful with the water, and don’t eat any dodgy looking food, but you never know where the next bug is hiding.

We’re really enjoying our food – generally we have a very light breakfast at the guesthouse (US$1.50 each), then we have lunch at the Protection Centre where we teach. The principal is a wonderful lady – around 65 I’d say, and she really looks after us. She always has a plate of bananas in the morning and cakes in the afternoon (I did find out that one of the major hotels collects all its left-over cakes and bread and delivers it to the schools of Krousar Thmey every day – so the cakes she serves are yesterday’s batch, but they still taste great!!). So at lunch time we join her, her two assistants and the cook for lunch. The Children make the lunch which is soup, rice and a vegetable stir fry with a smidge of chicken or pork. The food is unbelievably tasty, particularly the vegetables which are 100% organic of course – puts the stuff we get at home to shame. For dinner we pop out to one of the thousands of local restaurants where we can get anything. The warm, balmy nights and candlelights turn even the most ordinary restaurant into an enchanting dining experience – one night we went to an ‘all you can eat BBQ’, which you cook yourself at your table in a cooking thingy, for US$3 per a head; another night we had a great Khmer meal for $3.50; then if we need fix we’ll get a pizza for $4. So eating is great and cheap – and we can get a glass of wine for US$2 – French but OK at that price!!

We’re trying to keep up a fitness regime but found it too tough last week. There are three flights of stairs at the guesthouse – 50 steps altogether. We started going up and down the first week and were doing it four times a day. Then we did nothing last week. But now we will do it three times a week. Today we did it seven times so we’ll try to keep building on that. We may also hire some bikes at the weekends and get in some riding. We were thinking of riding between the schools we go to but the schedule is too tight.

Our classes are getting bigger by the day as word spreads. Every day another student turns up from one of the neighbouring villages. One of our challenges is trying to remember the names of all the children. Particularly with names like Sophoan, Yoeurng, Sophal Leng and Channthy. The children think it’s very funny when we pronounce their names incorrectly.

Socially we are starting to get out and about a little more and on Tuesday nights we have been going to the Funky Monkey, where a lot of other volunteers go for a Trivia night. There are many, many NGO’S working here and every week the money goes to another charity. Last week it was for an organisation called Trailblazers, who put into villages, sand water filters. Dirty water causes many diseases and deaths in Cambodia. Each water filter costs $45.

On Sunday we went to a place called the Singing Tree. Every week they have free meditation classes and Khmer lessons. On Sundays they have guitarists and in the garden children are encouraged to come in for free English conversation classes.

That’s all for now folks.