Sudden sickness

This week, dear readers, at Inkreadable was quite eventful. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Although, it ended well enough, it started out with a whimper. I had never in my six year career as a teacher, canceled on a student. At least, not due to illness. Inclement weather, sure. As was the case with Carlton and the one snowstorm that we had here in the Netherlands back in 2019. I’m not sure what happened, but in the middle of the night Monday into Tuesday I woke up feeling very dizzy. At the time I attribute it to not sleeping well. But I woke up on Tuesday morning at 6 AM to go to the gym, and as soon as I went from lying to sitting everything started to spin and the nausea was horrible. I duly canceled my gym appointment went back to sleep thinking that it was a fluke. But I woke up two hours later to the same symptoms but even more intense. With nothing for it but to push through, I had to get ready for the day, which felt like it took three hours. The first class of the day was a 2 hour private for TEC. I was able to make it for the first hour and 50 minutes with a slightly longer break of 10 minutes. And then I simply couldn’t manage. Thank God that my student was kind enough to let me end class those few minutes early because I was able to go lay down for 40 minutes before my classes with VIPKid started.

I set up my classroom for VIPKid to teach sitting down, which I haven’t done in about a year and a half. I find standing to teach to be much easier than sitting. There’s just less pain involved. But I could not stand and so switched my classroom to a sitting classroom. I managed to teach the first two lessons of their 2 1/2 hours for that day and then thankfully class three was a no-show. That meant that I could rest a bit. I think if it hadn’t been for that half hour the situation would’ve been worse than it was. As it was, it was not a good situation all around. At the end of the no-show, I started a one hour level seven class. We managed to get through the first 25 minutes and then the break with me explaining that I wasn’t feeling well and might have to leave the camera very quickly. And so it proved. Five minutes into the last 23 minutes of the class I had to leave the camera twice. I don’t think I’ve ever been physically sick in a class but I was this time. Thank goodness that my student was understanding. (Is it any wonder dear reader, why I love the older kids more than I like the littles?) The illness continued intermittently getting worse and better throughout that day and the next two. I had to cancel my Tuesday evening class with Karolina who I hadn’t seen since the beginning of the month.

The week wasn’t all bad however. Felix canceled until the middle of August when he is back from a trip and so I no longer have Monday evenings for the moment. I do wish that my adult students, would be a little bit more consistent about when they show up. But in this circumstance, I was quite happy that I didn’t have to prep anything. I am consequently, looking forward to seeing Karolina in just a few hours. I have missed her. I also have a couple of new clients potentially. I hesitate to say too much, but one of students is wanting to take Greek lessons with me. And I was further surprised to find out from his mom, that there are several children wanting to take Greek lessons. Apparently they all love the Percy Jackson series and are intrigued by learning the language that he is supposed to speak. As a result, I have to call in reinforcements for a bit of help. I therefore have placed a call to Lexus Amsterdam to see if I can get some help with materials.

Over in the writing world, the critique group has decided to go online and see if we can do a write-in Skype. If it works, perhaps we will expand it to the rest of the group. I’m a little bit skeptical because I myself don’t actually work well listening to other people type on computer. I need the physical presence of people around me typing to actually be motivated. But, I’m willing to give anything a try.

That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.