This post, dear reader is going to be fairly short. With my sister and her kids in town for a week, I only worked for about 2 1/2 hours this week. The rest of the time was filled with playing tourist in the city. A word of warning, dear reader, if you decide to come to Amsterdam, book your tickets in advance for museums and attractions as things tend to fill up quickly as they’re using reservations most places.
Of the museums that we saw, I think all of us got a kick out of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not exhibition. Ripley’s Cabinet of Curiosities here in Amsterdam is a repository of random items collected by the famed explorer over his career. I did notice that many of the replicas in the museum are post his passing. I am enough of a cynic to have been amused by the whole experience. We also got a chance to go to the Voorlinden museum which is just outside of The Hague. The Voorlinen, like Louisiana Museum in Denmark, is an old estate filled with artwork. We also got a chance to see the Singer museum in Laren, which presents the collection of William Henry Singer, the American artist. Our last Museum of the week was the shipping museum. What I like about all of these experiences, is that all of the museums make sure the kids are actively involved in looking at paintings. At the art museums we went to, the kids were able to do a scavenger hunt looking for a different paintings. While at the shipping museum, they had lots of tactile things to play with.
My new student Eleni, is a bubbly, smiley young woman. She was wonderful to meet and she really liked my lesson. What’s interesting is that Greek people aren’t normally so bubbly. She is taking the course because her Dutch boss told her that she is difficult to understand when speaking in English. You all know how I feel when Speakers of a second language actually criticize other speakers of a second language about that language so we won’t go into it. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of tongue twisters, some conversation and quite a bit of reading. To that end I have asked her for ideas on what she would like to read about and interestingly enough, she wants to read about pharmacology and epidemiology as that is her current line of work. Since I don’t have any experience with either of those, It will be an interesting experience indeed.
The Conversation Playground was on hiatus last week because of the fall break. We are meeting tomorrow in a different room instead. The plan is to do the past tense focusing on using went and go through bingo, doing a game called reporters where you tell stories using verbs on cards, For the second game we gave three verbs in the last class I taught, but I think for this one I’m only going to give two because we’re going to run into The paradox of choice and the kids are going to have too hard of a time. In addition, the bingo game I will also hand out bingo cards rather than having the kids picked their sentences. I think it’s the best way forward with this group because they take too long to pick stuff.
I also had my last Lingueo lesson with Karine, I now I only have one student on Wednesday and that is only a one hour. We will have to see if I get more lessons as the plan is to open up a week in advance and not more. VIPKid announced the setting up of a global platform. The base pay for all teachers will be seven dollars per class. Which means a nearly 30% pay cut for me. We will have to see what happens. I will probably just sign the contract and then not open anything.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there’s more to come.
Inkreadable 