A short update:
I’ve been having acute abdominal pain for the past two weeks since I moved to my new school. At first I didn’t think much of it since it could be due to the stress of settling in a new place, teaching or maybe the water etc. Saw 4 doctors and they told me it could be gastric/wind so I took lots of gastric medicine. The pain got much worse and some nights, I can’t move at all without cringing in pain. Miraculously, the pain would subside a little in the morning so I’d still teach (thank god).
But on Thursday night, the pain got so bad I can’t even do anything. Can’t breathe, can’t talk, can’t move. On Friday, I drove home (painful drive) and went straight to the hospital since there’s no proper hospital near my school. Saw a gastroenterologist at first cause I thought it had to do with gastric, then he referred me to a gynae cause it could be pelvic infection and finally I was referred to a surgeon cause it could be appendicitis.
The thing is, I’ve had the pain for too long for it to be appendicitis, so no one knows exactly what is wrong. So my surgeon gave me antibiotics and if I don’t get cured completely by Monday, I’ll have to have a surgery done to remove my appendix.
Surgery?? Now?? I am so upset cause I cannot afford to miss any teaching days or my kids would get soooo left behind. My mom was with me but she was more worried about me missing Chinese New Year wtf.
My parents are convinced there’s some black magic stuff and that I’ve been charmed (jampi-ed wtf) and got angry at me for choosing to go to a rural area. My mom called all her aunty friends to collect stories of people getting sick through black magic to scare me wtf. Also, the pain only started when I moved there but why would anyone want to harm a teacher?? They want me to transfer out now 
but no way I’m doing that. I’m sure it’s either just appendicitis or a case of very bad bacterial infection.
Anyway, aside from that I’ve been doing ok. I have so many stories to share! I spoke to this form 5 boy at length the other day and his story is quite eye-opening so I’ll write about that later.
I also kinda broke down for the first time last Friday after my very tough class with my more challenging kids. I taught them a song but only half the class would sing along, the other half was too shy/didn’t want to try. I sang the song to them over and over again, encouraged them, got them to pronounce the syllables etc but nothing worked.
I was also in pain so I can’t project my voice too much, then two boys started punching each other. The other boys immediately rushed to the crime scene, wanting to be part of the action too. I finally got them all settled down, sang the song, and talked to the boys about their conflict.
When I left that class, I felt my tears welled up. I felt like I just wasted these kids’ time because nothing probably went in their tiny cute heads. I had assumed that they could at least sing a song with me, I didn’t plan too much in advance and didn’t take into consideration their lower level compared to other classes. It was entirely my fault that the lesson went haywire.
And the worst part was, I only had 2 minutes to compose myself while I walk to my next class. 2 minutes to change from this distraught teacher to my usual cheery joyful teacher mode.
Life is just beginning to get a lot tougher for Cikgu Suet. But, all izz well.