First week of teaching is now complete. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at school and am really looking forward to the week ahead. My teacher Sopheap is amazing to work with - he is really supportive of me and is helping me out a lot. In return I am helping him with his English and Uni assignments which I know he really appreciates. So we seem to be a good team :)

The kids are just adorable and are now calling me Teacher Nicole! They still stare a lot but I just smile back and they giggle. They have all started to high five me at the end of class as they leave, which is sweet!

The first few days were definitely a challenge as I struggled to see how I could make any kind of difference in just 2 months. But by the end of the week I began to realise that I'm not going to make a big difference. One person can't change someones life that quickly, but if you add the time and effort of all the volunteers that come to Cambodia, then you can see that we can make a difference together.

Thursday and Friday were quiet days at school, as most of the village was at a funeral. A couple of classes were cancelled, so Sopheap took the opportunity to show me around the village of Prasat Char. His parents currently live there and this was also where he was raised.

We actually ended up attending the funeral, which is a 3 day event here. It has a very carnival-like atmosphere as people ate and celebrated the life of the person lost. To my suprise, part of this celebration was to watch the body being cremated. This is done by lighting fireworks off under the body and then placing fireballs on it. Certainly not an experience I had on my bucket list and it did take a vodka or two to calm me down that day :p However, watching this ceremony was a once in a life time experience and it was so interesting to be a part of!

It's Sunday night here now and I have had an awesome weekend. Saturday was spent celebrating a belated Australia Day for my roommate Ashleigh. She had a lot of fun painting kangaroos on everyone and making us eat vegemite sandwiches (oh the small things!) We ended up going to the pool down the road and enjoyed some cocktails and frisbee in the sun :)

Sunday was spent at the landmine museum, where we learnt more about the history of Cambodia and the millions of active landmines still present here. We also had the opportunity to watch a documentary premiere about the founder of the museum, Aka Ra, and his role in deactivating these mines, which he is still currently doing today.

This was the most touching movie I have ever seen, as this amazing man described his dedication to spending the rest of his life making Cambodia a safer place for his people. For anyone familiar in Cambodian history, Aka Ra was originally part of the Khmer Rouge, which killed millions of Cambodians in the 70's, by bombing large groups of civilians. Cambodians had no choice but to join the Khmer Rouge, or they would be killed. Aka Ra's family were all killed in those attacks and his wife recently past away due to miscarriage complications. In post traumatic stress, Aka Ra now feels the need to repay his country by finding and deactiving the bombs that still exist. I was truly inspired by his story!

To end the weekend all the volunteers headed out for a group dinner. The past two days have gone very fast and I think my bum has enjoyed a break from a motorcycle. Most of you know that if you poke me I will probably bruise within a minute, so it will come as no suprise that my bum looked like a bluberry from spending 10 hours on the back of a bike this week :p haha

Off to bed now, hope everyone had a good weekend xx