It is time, dear reader, to go home. I leave tomorrow and while I love being in Chania and every time I come back I feel more and more at home, I am very conscious that I could not live here and try to make a life within the system. In the first place, English language lessons do not command the same salary that they do in the Netherlands. Of course, the cost of living here is quite low. If VIPKid was still an option I would be living like a queen here in Chania. And in the second, this town is too small for anything but thoughts of retirement.
Speaking of VIPKid however, I have been enjoying not giving classes at all. There have been no annoying students, and no ridiculous parents. It has been glorious. So much so that I have decided not to open up any slots unless there is an emergency. What that means for me financially is that things will be quite tight for a while. But I will somehow muddle through. It’ll get better because my apartment in the States is in the process of being rented for October. And I think I have enough savings to figure everything else out. As I was writing this post on Sunday, I received news that my other apartment in the US is vacating so that will be some thing I need to deal with in a couple of months. But at least my tenants gave me the courtesy of letting me know they were vacating and even offered to help me find tenants if they could. Which was very kind of them because I didn’t expect it. It certainly is above and beyond the call of duty for the landlord tenant relationship.
The English Center seems to be revving up quite nicely. I now have six clients on the books, though I have not seen all of them for quite a long time. Claudia has asked that I do an editing project for her instead of a lesson and I sent a message to English Center asking them if that was OK but have not heard anything as of this writing. My newest client is a Dutch guy called Marco and he wants some help with vocabulary and Business English. He’s a little bit like my student Jochem so I may be able to use some of the same material. I also have to set up classes with Freek in Amstelveen and I am not sure if I’m able to do that. I thin that the Covid restrictions are going to change completely starting on 25 September, but the issue is that I’m still waiting to hear from the Conversation Playground as to whether we are getting started on 27 September, 4 October, or not at all. I received an interesting Email from a company called Upper Level in France that is looking for teachers. They do both virtual and in person lessons. I took a look at their website and sent them my resume telling them that I’d be interested in virtual lessons. As always, dear reader, you’ll be in the know as soon as I do.
I’m also waiting for Xander to tell me if he wants to meet in person or online starting on 27 September. I did send a communication to find out what he wanted but no response as of this writing either. As ever my life is full of limbo and I find it a little bit difficult to handle. As always, however the best way out is always through and that is what I’m trying to keep telling myself. But it was interesting because the theme of this weeks weight watchers meeting was time management and I almost feel like I was telling a bit of a lie when I said I’m a really good time manager. Because it hasn’t been feeling like that lately.
On balance it’s been an amazing trip to Greece and I am quite happy to have spent the month here but I do think also that it’s time to go home. My sister and brother-in-law have been all that is kind and my niece and nephew are cute as buttons. But they also moved into their house scarcely six weeks ago and they haven’t had a moment alone to enjoy it and that’s quite hard when you’re talking about a new house. I have resolved to come for shorter stays but more frequently so that I can get my fill of Chania, without overstaying my welcome. Because as much as you love someone having them for one month under your roof is never easy.
With my return to the Netherlands, the Writers Group comes back to my house at least on 23 September and we will have to see what happens from there on out. The inconsistency of our locations is proving to be a little bit troublesome as is coordinating the people who want to be in the WhatsApp group and the people who do not. It makes for a little bit of stress for me. I’m going to have to figure out a solution post haste.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 