This place and my health are not good friends. I'm at the point where I'm swinging between anxiety and fury at the thought of having to deal with our medical clinic.
I was supposed to go in each evening this week for a 20-30 minute massage, followed by a 250ml glucose drip. I only did one evening of the glucose drip (I know that all the carbs we eat turn to glucose in the body, but when I eat little to no sugar, that much straight into my system is a bit too much). I gave up on the massages after three days, when the young male masseuse became a little too flirty and familiar for my comfort. Along with this additional "treatment", I was supposed to complete my annual medical check. Kazakh labour code requires a yearly check which includes blood and urine tests, a chest x-ray and ECG. I did the tests and x-ray last week when I was home sick and already heading into the clinic to get my sick leave papers organised. I had forgotten about the ECG, so on Monday when I was in for the massage, I asked about that. I had to wait to Friday: the ECG technician apparently only operated until 5pm, and I'd need to see a doctor afterwards for the final results, and Friday was the only day that they had appointments available and when I could get away from work early.
Friday afternoon rolled around, and I collected my x-ray on the way to the clinic. Once I'm there, I sat around for almost an hour, as the English-speaking receptionist had asked if I could wait while she filed some paperwork (off premises, it turned out). At about three minutes before 5, I used Google Translate to ask another receptionist if I could just do the ECG already, so she took me up. I got the ECG and went back down to the ground floor, presumably to wait to see the doctor to get the final stamp of clearance. But no, apparently I also need to see a "woman doctor" (pap smear, maybe?), which I couldn't do then. I simply do not understand the logic (or incredible lack of logic) of the people in this city/country. Why couldn't they have told me that I needed this extra step LAST WEEK when I was in there 3 or 4 times? I now need to go back yet again on Tuesday morning (no free time on Monday), and risk having to skip half a class to do so. This time of year is insanely busy for me and I have very few consecutive spare lessons; it takes 15-20 minutes by taxi each way from home/work, not to mention the cost (which is actually dirt cheap if I convert into dollars, but still an inconvenience).
Isn't this the cutest yet most useless x-Ray you've ever seen?
Anyway, apart from hating the "medical system" here, things have been ok. I'm trying to get a group of kids ready to pass the Thinking Skills Assessment, which is set by Nazarbayev University as its entrance exam or to qualify for an international scholarship. However, the actual exam is the same paper used by Cambridge and Oxford universities, among others, as their entrance papers. It's a very difficult paper, even for me, but even more so for these kids who are doing it in their third language while having little to no experience in Critical Thinking. The education they have received has not taught them thinking skills, but rather to regurgitate information (our school system is supposedly trying to change that, but thus far there is little to no evidence of that actually happening). My kids are all working really hard but they're only just halfway to where they need to be, and we've got less than a month to get them there (don't get me started on how the teachers wanted to start classes way back in September but Administration said no, they have IELTS first so it's more important; and, rant no. 2, the fact that the university only released the specifics of the exam mid-December, leaving us even less time to prepare).
Other problems are kinda still around at work, but I've been so busy/preoccupied with medical centre stress that they've faded into the background. Which is maybe a little odd, as one of the other stressors to arise this week was the information that the NIS head office is drastically reducing the number of teachers across the network. Each school will only be allowed 11 international staff, including the VP. Our school had 16 (until one colleague was fired just before Christmas). The reductions for us are occurring in the maths department (one teacher instead of two) and English (from five to two). I don't want to stick around Kyzylorda for another year, but I wouldn't mind a transfer to a nicer city, but this means there'll be more competition for those posts, and preference will be given to teachers who have worked for NIS for at least two years, rather than my year and a half by the time the transfers happen.
Oh, re my title for this post: my car, Gustav, which Sherrie has been driving around, has decided to die, so I want the end of the month to come sooner so I can get paid so we can actually think about buying another car - because Shmee is studying and therefore broke, we've got a deal that she gets to borrow my car as long as I'm not in the country, which is why I need to buy a new one.
19 weeks until we're done for this school year. *Deep breaths*. You can survive this, Andrea.
I was supposed to go in each evening this week for a 20-30 minute massage, followed by a 250ml glucose drip. I only did one evening of the glucose drip (I know that all the carbs we eat turn to glucose in the body, but when I eat little to no sugar, that much straight into my system is a bit too much). I gave up on the massages after three days, when the young male masseuse became a little too flirty and familiar for my comfort. Along with this additional "treatment", I was supposed to complete my annual medical check. Kazakh labour code requires a yearly check which includes blood and urine tests, a chest x-ray and ECG. I did the tests and x-ray last week when I was home sick and already heading into the clinic to get my sick leave papers organised. I had forgotten about the ECG, so on Monday when I was in for the massage, I asked about that. I had to wait to Friday: the ECG technician apparently only operated until 5pm, and I'd need to see a doctor afterwards for the final results, and Friday was the only day that they had appointments available and when I could get away from work early.
Friday afternoon rolled around, and I collected my x-ray on the way to the clinic. Once I'm there, I sat around for almost an hour, as the English-speaking receptionist had asked if I could wait while she filed some paperwork (off premises, it turned out). At about three minutes before 5, I used Google Translate to ask another receptionist if I could just do the ECG already, so she took me up. I got the ECG and went back down to the ground floor, presumably to wait to see the doctor to get the final stamp of clearance. But no, apparently I also need to see a "woman doctor" (pap smear, maybe?), which I couldn't do then. I simply do not understand the logic (or incredible lack of logic) of the people in this city/country. Why couldn't they have told me that I needed this extra step LAST WEEK when I was in there 3 or 4 times? I now need to go back yet again on Tuesday morning (no free time on Monday), and risk having to skip half a class to do so. This time of year is insanely busy for me and I have very few consecutive spare lessons; it takes 15-20 minutes by taxi each way from home/work, not to mention the cost (which is actually dirt cheap if I convert into dollars, but still an inconvenience).
Anyway, apart from hating the "medical system" here, things have been ok. I'm trying to get a group of kids ready to pass the Thinking Skills Assessment, which is set by Nazarbayev University as its entrance exam or to qualify for an international scholarship. However, the actual exam is the same paper used by Cambridge and Oxford universities, among others, as their entrance papers. It's a very difficult paper, even for me, but even more so for these kids who are doing it in their third language while having little to no experience in Critical Thinking. The education they have received has not taught them thinking skills, but rather to regurgitate information (our school system is supposedly trying to change that, but thus far there is little to no evidence of that actually happening). My kids are all working really hard but they're only just halfway to where they need to be, and we've got less than a month to get them there (don't get me started on how the teachers wanted to start classes way back in September but Administration said no, they have IELTS first so it's more important; and, rant no. 2, the fact that the university only released the specifics of the exam mid-December, leaving us even less time to prepare).
Other problems are kinda still around at work, but I've been so busy/preoccupied with medical centre stress that they've faded into the background. Which is maybe a little odd, as one of the other stressors to arise this week was the information that the NIS head office is drastically reducing the number of teachers across the network. Each school will only be allowed 11 international staff, including the VP. Our school had 16 (until one colleague was fired just before Christmas). The reductions for us are occurring in the maths department (one teacher instead of two) and English (from five to two). I don't want to stick around Kyzylorda for another year, but I wouldn't mind a transfer to a nicer city, but this means there'll be more competition for those posts, and preference will be given to teachers who have worked for NIS for at least two years, rather than my year and a half by the time the transfers happen.
Oh, re my title for this post: my car, Gustav, which Sherrie has been driving around, has decided to die, so I want the end of the month to come sooner so I can get paid so we can actually think about buying another car - because Shmee is studying and therefore broke, we've got a deal that she gets to borrow my car as long as I'm not in the country, which is why I need to buy a new one.
19 weeks until we're done for this school year. *Deep breaths*. You can survive this, Andrea.
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