I have been back in the Netherlands for about a week and a half. While I am slowly getting back into the swing of things, I have learned a couple of things that were unexpected. The most important of which is that the saying age is just a number is frankly. bullshit. At least when it comes to getting over jetlag. I am finding that it’s taking me quite a bit longer to get into a sleep pattern and that is even for me because I am not the best sleeper normally. It’s also been tough trying to get back into a gym routine. It also doesn’t help that twice a week I am in Amstelveen teaching Harumi and one of those is quite early. That is a tough wake-u. It’s been tough trying to get back into a gym routine. It also doesn’t help that twice a week I am in Amstelveen Teaching Harumi and one of those, though not unreasonable at 9:30 am, means I need to be out of the house by 8:00.
On the positive side, I very much enjoyed not having to travel to Amstelveen for the Conversation Playground. I have to say that’s one of my most stressful commitments. The kids are wonderful, but I did suggest to Amardip that he exclude the group 6 classes from participating as they simply don’t have enough language. Or, if he wants to capture the group six market then the games are structured in such a way that they learn chunks of language and vocabulary. It would be more lesson than game format.
Over at the English Center, I have pretty much scheduled all of my classes with the exception of one of my students, Martijn who does want continue, but was unsure that what that would look like. He wasn’t sure whether his level had improved in our classes. I had to explain, that in the context of private lessons improvement is measured differently. We can always test him to see how he has improved in his level. I also had to explain that the English Center is only giving lessons that are business-focused. I think that Martijn would do quite well in the intermediate business English class, but he feels that he does not want to be with business people who are much faster than he. So it looks like he’s going to stick with me. Harumi and Eleni both have scheduled their lessons. The two of them take me well into January. By far the most challenging student in terms of scheduling currently, Is ShinWei. He has decided to renew for another 10 hours, and that takes me to the end of February. At that point I will be in the states. The challenge is that we don’t know what his schedule will be like. There is the possibility that he will also be in the states and if I’m in the states at the same time it will be quite easy, but if I am back in the Netherlands then we have to adjust for that time difference. Because under no circumstances will I be waking in the middle of the night to teach. Those days are over.
My private clients are both a little bit easier, and a little bit harder. I have to schedule Sander because my unexpected trip to the US has knocked us a little bit off course. Since he paid me for the whole package in advance, it took me a little while to figure out where we are in the 15 hours and how much we have left to go. I sat down to figure this out on Sunday. With Karolina I bill her at the end of the month and she only pays for lessons that she’s taken. So that’s just a matter of counting from the calendar. George and Jerry are similar except that I get paid in advance into PayPal and deduct the invoice amount at the end of the month. With Odhran, the student in Ireland whom I teach Greek, the challenge is not the package, it’s four hours which makes 8 half-hour lessons, which theoretically should be used up in one month. The challenge here has been both my travel and theirs. Just before I left for the states they went to the states so that the kids could get vaccinated. Then I was in the states and they came back to Europe. I came back to Europe and taught two lessons this week. And then they went back to the US. So the ping-ponging of our lessons has me in a tizzy. I cannot figure out where in the package we are very easily.
The English Center is changing its payment system and I and several other teachers have been selected to be their Lab rats. I will find out tomorrow what that will entail. I hope that it is not terribly difficult because just as I’ve gotten into the swing of weekly invoicing, it may now change. I am not all that good with change. And I get really stressed out having to learn new things.
The Writers Group has been meeting online on Thursday evenings. We also meet on at least one weekend day. This weekend was Sunday. While I do actual writing and creating on Thursday evenings, Sundays had become devoted to lesson planning. It’s been quite difficult because of jetlag. I haven’t been able to plan a full week’s worth of lessons in one day. I think I want to get back to that place. I made a valiant attempt on Sunday during the time I was supposed to be writing, but I didn’t quite manage to get all eight of my hours planned. Still, I am confident that I will get back to that.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 