This week at Inkreadable, the dear reader was a quiet one, what with Lunar New Year and the absence of both George and Jerry and ShinWei on my schedule. With not much to do in terms of work, I was able to take care of some much-needed Washington DC writers group dangling threads. The Washington writers group had been paying for the meet-up site for years. As a result, they had a considerable amount of money from dues that has not been spent. Joe, who was my organizer for the group and I have decided that I would give the group the money and they can decide what to do with it. What that does for me is clean up my finances, which makes me happy. It’s been a little difficult to try and coordinate the Amsterdam writers group from afar but Mark, my co-organizer in Amsterdam, seems to have it all handled. It’s a little bit of a wrinkle for me because I have been experiencing some serious fomo. But that will end in a couple of weeks when I am back in the Netherlands. Let’s hope that we will be able to meet in person.
As you all know, pre-lockdown, I was hosting the writers group at my house. We might have a little bit of a problem with that because I am going to be teaching a student who just moved to Amsterdam from Jordan. He is semi-intensive and so I will be working with him for four hours a week over the next three weeks. The problem is I have scheduled Tuesday and Thursday and while that will not be a problem while in the States, it will be a problem once I get back to the Netherlands as I will be teaching from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. which is exactly the time that my writer’s group meets at my house. I’m not quite sure what to do with that but maybe if the student decides to renew after the 12 hours he will be able to schedule the lesson so that they don’t conflict with Thursday evening and I will be able to host the group. That is a question for today as we have our first lesson. We will just have to see how flexible the student can be.
In other English Center news, ShinWei has decided to renew once again that’s great. But he is heading to California next week for about a month so we will have to schedule our lessons around that time change. California is 9 hours behind Amsterdam so that will take a little finagling. Luckily, he is pretty flexible and we will be able to work something out. I have not heard from Eleni as to whether she wants to continue and TEC has been asking me. Eleni would like to continue and I would like to continue with her as well but the issue is her work. I took the precaution of asking her on Sunday via WhatsApp but I have not yet heard. The other interesting potentiality for my schedule is an intensive Conversation Playground Bootcamp that will happen the week I get back. I have given The Conversation Playground until Thursday before the Bootcamp starts to let me know whether I will be working. It promises to be interesting if I do get the job because I will be jet lagging pretty hard. It also impacts a new private student that i have as we might have to start a week later than planned.
The US has also been quite busy with trying to figure out what to do with my apartment as well as reconnecting with people that I haven’t seen for a while. In addition, it’s been a source of stress because I haven’t been able to see my sister except for very brief, very cold stints as we’re not allowed into her house. She has been in quarantine for two years. It’s true it hasn’t been the whole time but near enough. The DC government has made a decision about quarantine but I have not as of this writing heard what that decision is. Hopefully for the last 2 weeks that I am here, I will be able to get to spend more time with my sister. I owe her a couple of games of Uno.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there’s more to come.
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