 I am, dear reader, in the middle of a lovely vacation. I am doing nothing except reading, some editing, and some baking. I am taking the opportunity from now until the New Year to try and figure out my next steps. As a result, workwise it’s been fairly quiet even in the planning stages. My in real life class, doesn’t start back up until 11 January as my student went to Curaçao and was not sure whether he would be able to come back on 4 January given travel restrictions and a 10 day quarantine upon return. Or at least that was the plan. It may be that he didn’t leave for Curaçao at all, but I doubt that because he is one of the people who, while not a Covid denier, doesn’t believe that it’s as serious as people say. And therefore is willing to push boundaries a little bit. Luckily he has been following the rules and has been testing negative when he does need to travel. My other English Center client who is online doesn’t start back up until 8 January so I have some time to prep lessons.
In terms of VIPKid, I have decided not to open lessons In January that are not short notice. You see, I had a close call this week. I got a message from Preply, Saying someone had tried to book me for a lesson. The students name is Swan, leading me to believe it’s someone from China who wanted to book me on 23 December at 8 AM. I would have done it, too. Even at 8 AM. I sent a text message asking if they still wanted a lesson and if I could help to book the lesson at 8 AM and also if they wanted to do it another time. But alas, there was no response. Still, it was nice to have some thing thisclose 0n the books. Leading me to believe, that there may be a way out of teaching for VIPKid at least as much as I have been. It’s going to take some juggling I think. The plan right now is to not accept any of the bookings that are floating around my teacher portal. And there are 20 of them. I’m just going let them expire. Instead I think what I’ll do is I will open up the French platform and see if I can get any bookings there.
My Greek student is going to continue with me and I am anxiously awaiting feedback from my friend at Lexis Amsterdam about the lesson. I sent her a video recording just before the holidays of a lesson. But I learned a lesson with them this week, I need to be mor clear with them about canceling a class. They came to class on Sunday. I felt bad, but not bad enough to have class. My other private clients are also on hold till January, with my twins having a short month as they have midterms again. I think that is in advance of their holiday break for Chinese New Year in that starts mid January. We will see if Karolina comes back from her month off.
While Jasper has essentially moved in, he has yet to bring any of his stuff over from his house because the last couple of days if too much overindulgence in terms of food and was reflected in how he felt. In addition the weather has absolutely been shitty with almost gale force winds overnight that don’t exactly allow for ease of movement. Also, the fact that he can sleep half the day away doesn’t really allow for him doing very much work on his house when he does happen to get there.
All of my writing related activities are also on hold until January. And I think with the writers group we are going to try and find a new space for January assuming things start to open up again. Right now everything is shut down until 19 January. Then we will have to see. The government has been giving press conferences every couple of weeks to let us know of any changes. But for right now, it will be online Thursday night sessions until we can figure out the logistics of meeting. One of my members has a free space that she is allowed to use when she wants to so I’m thinking to go and take a look at that as it might be a good option as well.
That’s all she work for this Inkreadable installment, But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 