My trip back to the Netherlands was thankfully uneventful. I’d forgotten how difficult it is to travel to Europe coming from the United States, however. This is particularly true in the winter, where you spend the seven hours of the flight in almost constant darkness. Winter time travel is particularly difficult for me because I don’t sleep on the airplane. This trip, I got a chance to watch two movies and a British architecture show called “The World’s Most Extraordinary Houses”. That was particularly interesting because all of the houses were exceedingly modern. Not to mention only something a truly wealthy person could afford.
I find that jet lag has started taking a real toll. This is especially true coming from the US. I used to be able to land in a country in Europe and not have to sleep until proper sleeping hours. When I landed on Thursday morning, I was not able to do that and instead slept for half the day. I have not yet acclimated completely to the Netherlands schedule, but I’m very glad that I took off The 10th to the 13th. It was quite strange because on the 10th I was able to sleep late at night and actually sleep through most of the night. On the 11th I was not so lucky and wasn’t able to sleep at all. And the next two nights were the same. Not really able to sleep very well, feeling very tired and sleep drunk through the whole day.
My return to Amsterdam heralded the potential for new class opportunities. You’ll remember that I told you that I had seen the young man with the potential of tutoring him in math and reading. Upon reflection, I think that is not going to work out as I sent a proposal to the parents and they never responded. Not even to refuse the proposal. I find it funny that people expect to pay nothing for your services in terms of teaching. They don’t have the same issue with a doctor or a lawyer and those prices per hour are much higher then the price that I quoted. I also had a student come in on Sunday and he is an adult. I did a level test with him, and he has signed up for 3 lessons a week lasting 1.5 hours. He will come to me and didn’t quibble with anything I said. What a joy prepping for his class is going to be. A bit of a break from the dog and pony show of online teaching is very welcome indeed. I have decided to take Sundays off of VIPKid for the duration of these classes. At this point there is no end date. As ever, writing remains the biggest challenge for me. I am not able to write more than the blog post once a week. Having said that, I haven’t been to Writers Group in Amsterdam either. We will see what happens on Thursday and how productive I can possibly be.
All in all, I am very happy to be back in Amsterdam. Because as I said in previous posts, happiness is a choice and I choose something to be happy about every day. That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned, as always, there is more to come.
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