I’m not sure why is, dear reader, that adult students seem to want the same days and times. Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to be extremely popular days. So much so that I am concerned that I do not have enough time to accept more lessons. I have a student who wants to meet online from 11 to 11:30 in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The problem is I have another student who wants to meet in person on one of those days. The in person client is Freek who is now back on my schedule. The problem is I have to add an hour and a half each way to my commute to get to Amstelveen. I also have Ellemieke who I’ve been meeting on Thursdays as well. My dilemma is how do I accommodate all of these clients and still have room for more. On Mondays, I have Xander from 11 to 1230 and then the Conversation Playground from 2:45 to 345. I could potentially do the class from 9 to 1030 on a Monday morning, and then again from five onwards. Right now in the evening I have one client, but when Claudia jumps back on my schedule next week, that’s going to cause a problem because she also likes Monday at 5 PM. I’m also waiting to hear on a new client starting on October 7. It would be no problem if Freek wanted to be online, but his company will not allow it. A potential solution is that I schedule Freek in the evening, but the last time we met he said he wanted a morning lesson. With about 10 hours of work a week total between all of my assorted platforms and clients, it feels like a lot of shuffling and agonizing.
Conversation Playground started yesterday, and it’s a small group 6 students total. It’s also a little bit more convenient than the Karol Eijkman school. I went to the wrong Campus as there are two but only one of them is listed by Google. I got lucky and a teacher told me where to go, so I arrived in time, but the stress was annoying. With Freek back on my schedule, that means that I’m traveling out to Amstelveen twice a week. The English Center pays for the commute but the Conversation Playground does not. The owner of The Conversation Playground, Amardip, has said that I can use the classes from our summer session so that makes it much easier because then there is very little prep. Will have to see how it goes, but the group is easy to handle and the size makes it easy to remember everybody’s name. We also tested out the Escape Room App that Amardip is building and it seems to work quite well as least in theory, the reality in the classroom was a bit different. the students in this class are at a lower level and there was a lot more Dutch. The boys are at a higher level than the four boys but they’ll get there. The best of the bunch was a kid called Laurens whose dad is American. But I said to Amardip that I think it’s going to be a long two months.
Many hotels in Amsterdam had an open day on Thursday, so the writer’s group found itself back at the Hoxton. This was thanks to Marijn who gave us the tip. I was a bit surprised that she was able to get into the Hotel as she has not been vaccinated and they are requiring your Coronacheck app at the door. She said that is because she’s very tall and is able to make herself disappear using her invisibility power. The girl is cuckoo for cocoa puffs. She also has no idea about social etiquette and niceties. In the WhatsApp group when we were talking about whether people could go to the hotel if they were unvaccinated or no.t, she said that she was not participating in the apartheid and would go anyway. The comment blew everybody’s mind. She was using the term to mean being kept apart and classified. It’s bad enough in Dutch, it’s much worse in English. I had people come up to me at the meeting saying That they almost did not come to the meeting because of her. I am not really sure what to do about it. On the one hand she has nice tips and wants to be helpful, but on the other hand she could potentially be extremely divisive to the group. It is a conundrum to be sure. Even so, being at the Hoxton was very nice even if I didn’t get a lot of writing done. It’s always nice to meet new people and this time with no exception.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 