First impressions

The majority of the Lawoe interns were placed in schools near Lopburi and Surin and they left on coaches early in the morning, leaving only a dozen of us to wait to be collected by our individual schools. Plah, a school principal once again gave us the run down on our school and her last message directly aimed to me was 'Do not break up any marriages.' Basically meaning do not sleep with any Thai women. She told me if she was told I had ended a relationship then we would be having some very serious words.
Karen, Lindsay, Jenny, Tim and I were collected in the St Louis School minivan by a driver and Sitong and driven to the school in Chacoengsao. Sitong is a teacher at the school as well as being in charge of all the foreign teachers.
Foreign teachers in Thailand are well looked after and although we will be teaching only a fraction of what the rest of the teachers work we are paid the same if not more. A couple of the rules placed by Lawoe internship is that all interns have to be given a private room with hot shower and air-conditioning. It is much more than many of the locals have.
Within an hour of leaving Bangkok we were at the school and assigned rooms. The rooms were much better than I had expected and the five of us are living at the school directly above the teachers lunch area. The school is located on a major river and has its own swimming pool, gym, basketball courts, football fields all of which we are allowed to use whenever we wish.
There are 4000 students at the school ranging from three to 18 years old and I have been assigned to teach the older primary students. School was due to start on Wednesday although the floods have delayed the starting date pushing it back to the 3rd of November. The school is loacted in an area the Thailand government was going to flood to save Bangkok although it now seems unlikely we will be flooded. Just like in Bangkok though all the shops are protected by concrete walls and sandbags. The school have built a concrete wall on the edge of the river to protect their grounds.