We had a tour of the school on Thursday. It's huge! The primary school I went to at broughton was about 90 pupils. This one is 3,500. Is the most famous school in Surin Province. They run an English Program (EP) where the children learn mainly in English. It costs a huge amount of money for the parents to send their children to it. It's almost like a school within a school. Out of the 25 of us interns that are at the school only four of us are in the EP. Apparently picked by the school. It's ridiculous the amount of pressure we are being put under, lesson planning, structure etc. At least the others can go to the staff room, we have to stay in our class all day even at lunch. There are four teachers in the EP class, (I'm in K1), there's a nanny, a Thai teacher, a co-teacher and the white English teacher, which is what the parents are really paying for though we see little of the money as about 80% of our wage goes to our agency. The "tour" of the school ended with us EP teachers having to teach their new class which was completely unexpected and not fair at all with no warning.
I was meant to be in school yesterday too, teaching again, thou we aren't meant to start until Tuesday. But my ankles have swollen up really badly so I could hardly walk and have a horrible red blistery rash on them. I spent 4 hours waiting in a and e, had bloods taken, blood pressure taken, urine test, chest X-ray done but nothing showed up. I could have still had an ultrasound but I had been there since half 11 and it was by that point half 4 I hadn't eaten or drank anything so I got a drop in appointment for Tuesday if they aren't better to go back. I got some steroid tablets and steroid cream for the rash. They actually look a fair bit better thank god. Having done nursing I was pretty judgemental about the hospital, though it could have been a lot worse I'm sure.
