Greetings, dear reader, from glorious Greece. I have taken my laptop and my lesson planning off for 12 days with my family for the Greek Easter holidays. I got here yesterday and the trip was not without its drama. But more about that later. The week at Inkreadable was quite quiet in terms of lessons with quite a few of my students away. Shinwei remains in Taiwan and so his lessons continue to be online. Because I am away my Japanese client and I are continuing our lessons online as well and that makes four lessons total while I am away. I must admit it is very nice not to have to travel to do lessons. In China, my students proceed well and they have just had a major English exam that both did very well on and were very happy. I have changed tack with them a little bit. One week we are doing the book that we have and the following week we are doing another lesson, usually a teen lesson from Linguahouse. They seem to find the new format interesting and at least it’s not totally about Grammar and writing which can be kind of boring. That’s right I said it. Writing can be kind of boring. There is the possibility of a new client in Gouda. She’s a Polish dentist and would like lessons once a week for 3 hours and she is hoping to combine it with a friend of hers for a further 3 hours. I might do that kind of traveling for 6 hours at 55 Euros per hour if they pay for my travel as well. As always, I’ll keep you posted. There is still no news regarding the In-Company with Flowently.
I’m sure you’re looking at the title of my blog today and going what the hell is gastrogrimness. No, it isn’t some new cafe at the Amsterdam Dungeon. It isn’t often that I make up terms but in this case, it seemed necessary. On Thursday last week, my body decided to tell me it was unhappy with me by not allowing me to eat. It started dear reader, at the writers’ group. Everything was fine and then all of a sudden I started feeling quite poorly. I ate one french fry on my stomach started to hurt quite a bit. Not an acute pain but just as if I had eaten too much. The issue continues until now. It’s not very easy not being able to eat anything. Especially as I’m in Greece and the food here is amazing. I’m finding that I’m only able to eat in small bites and I get full very quickly. It might be great for weight loss but it’s not so good for one’s morale. Hopefully, it will pass soon, and if it doesn’t once back in the Netherlands I will deal with it at the doctor’s office. And this time I won’t take no for an answer which is what I normally do with the doctor.
My trip to Greece was not without its own eventfulness. The trip itself went fine, but when I got there I was exhausted. My dad picked me up from Heraklion which is a city about two and a half hours away from where my sister lives. My dad was about twenty minutes and once he picked me up, I was informed of the itinerary. We went to a winery that is owned by a friend of his and spent the afternoon. While we were there we got to go to the house of Arthur Evans who became famous for the excavations at Knossos. But he is not the person who discovered the palace. The actual discovery happened about 20 years before his arrival but because the Island was under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman viceroy who owned the land where the palace is today didn’t want it excavated. So Evan’s got the credit and the original excavator is only now getting his due. While all of this is interesting, it was exhausting. But the fun was not over yet. On the way home my dad was stopped by the police for a driving infraction. S*** got serious as they took his license away, and kept my sister’s registration. They gave him a paper that allowed him to drive the rest of the way home, but he is not allowed to drive for 30 days. The problem with this is he is leaving the day after I do to go back to the States, and there is no guarantee that he will get his license back. These are EU procedures, but the small fry trying to exert his power on the road was both amusing and horrifying to watch. Moral of the story is when driving in the EU be very very careful.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But, stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
Inkreadable 