This week at Inkreadable, dear reader, was a busy one. Jasper and I set off for the US in a couple of days and so both of us spent the weekend running around trying to prepare. For him, that meant buying eight kilograms of cheese and various other Dutch delicacies to bring to his parents. For me, it meant setting up appointments to get stuff done in the US. His Preparation was much more fun than mine because it included a trip to the candy store. I was able to do a couple of fun things even with all the coordinating that I had to do.
Before I get into the fun stuff, my schedule is a little bit packed in the run-up to the summer holiday. There is a little bit of good news and bad news with regard to private students. I saw Sander yesterday and then I won’t see him until the 13th of June. We will have to see what happens on the 13th of June because I am away the following week. It is a variable ping pong in terms of scheduling, dear reader, which can be quite difficult to keep track of. I swear, reader if I didn’t have Google Calendar loaded on my phone I would be a basket case. As it is, every little thing I am doing goes on my calendar whether it’s work or not. Odhran has moved to once a week for the foreseeable future. Vocabulary and listening skills are quite good but he struggles to pick the right answers to grammar questions. I spent most of the weekend trying to figure out how to teach him grammar and I’m struggling. As the last resort, I might ask my friend Despina over at Lexis Amsterdam but I don’t like imposing on her time. George and Jerry are also quieting down a little bit as they have a couple of significant exams coming up in May and June. There are a couple of bright spots in the private world. Lillian my teacher in China wants to continue after the 16 hours are over and has decided to go to an hour a week. It’s a much better schedule even if I don’t have to do much prep in the first place. I am shortly getting a new student who coincidentally happens to be from Taiwan. It’s always interesting discussing the dichotomy between the two countries so I’m looking forward so not just teaching the student but also learning from them.
It is a bit of a sad time in terms of the English Center for me. I had my last lesson with ShinWei last night. I am sad because we have been together for 40 weeks almost straight. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year. I am pretty sure that we will keep in touch as we tend to socialize and that is quite fun. But I will certainly miss seeing him once a week in the classroom. I have been enjoying my classes with Gallini the Greek girl quite a lot. She is pretty easy to prepare for as she’s just pronunciation and we do a lot of reading and talking. My girls from Palestine have not appeared on my schedule as yet even though I contacted their father to try and make appointments before I go to the States. I had contacted him on Friday to let him know that I would be available on Sunday and Wednesday this week for lessons for the girls but he never got back to me. I spoke to Brenda about the issue but we were unable to figure out how to deal with it as the customer really is King and there isn’t much that I can do. I have spent the last couple of weeks during a review of Elementary English with Harumi and she seems to be really well with exercises. What continues to be a struggle for her is speaking but I don’t anticipate that will get better if she doesn’t use the language. I hope when she gets to Paris that she will use English much more frequently than she does here in the Netherlands. Luckily, I will get a chance to see how that works because I am definitely going to go to Paris to visit her. The Ukrainian beginner class wrapped up yesterday and I can’t say I was too broken up about it.
I did get a chance to do some fun stuff over the weekend. The writer’s group decided to meet in real life on a Saturday. We tried a coffee shop( not the Amsterdam coffee shop) but a Starbucks type of coffee shop that had a view of the water to the north of the city. I think this is going to have to become a regular thing at least in the summer. Although we did decide that maybe it would be quite a nice place to go in the winter as well. Now that the pandemic is considered over by most people finding different cafes to write in is probably going to become a staple weekend activity. Whether it’s raining or not.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
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