For the last four years, I have been mostly earning in dollars and living in euros. And while the exchange rate has never been great, forecasts for 2021 show that it’s going to be even more difficult to live in Europe and work for VIPKid. The exchange rate between the dollar and the euro is going to plummet making the dollar much weaker. Essentially, that means that any money that I make with VIPKid, will be valued at less than what it is now. I am not the only one going through this as my Facebook group has been talking about this for the last few days. It means that beyond our paychecks being lower because VIPKid cut the pay so drastically, whatever money we make is worth much less. I am more and more thankful that I have the English Center and my few private clients to supplement my income in euros. Between that and Covid, I’m not sure that 2021, at least the first part, is going to be a very happy new year.
Over at the English Cnter, there is more work but alas it is in Amstelveen. I have put myself forward for none of it. It doesn’t make any sense for me to be going to Amstelveen more than once a week and even that once per week, has to be worth it for me. That means that I should have at least two clients. Because while my travel pay goes down, my actual pay goes up. So I have decided not to go there until my one client is back on my schedule starting next year. Then I will give Monday to the English Center completely. Which is what I’ve been doing for the last year. I will however, put my hat in the ring for any students in any of the Amsterdam locations particularly the one that is a 15 minute walk from my house.
My online client on Fridays is a lot of fun, but also very challenging. She’s really making me up my game in terms of academic English. And since I only have her for an hour on Friday afternoons, it’s really hard to find a good structure for that hour. It isn’t so much there isn’t enough material, in fact there is too much material to go through in one hour. I would honestly prefer that the lesson was an hour and a half, Rather than an hour. I could get a lot more done and really help her with the concepts that I’m teaching. I am really enjoying this particular student because it’s different than what I’ve done before. I’ve done accent training, I’ve done social English, and conversational English but never academic English. We have eight classes that will take us through the end of February So it will definitely be a challenge trying to get through enough material so that she feels confident enough in her English so that she feels better able to compete language wise with her peers.
Thursday Night writing, the online edition is going quite well. I am enjoying having that time to reconnect with my characters. I do have my work cut out for me as I have been getting comments from my critique group that make me feel like I need to rewrite the whole novel. The problem is that it’s so tightly written that I am not sure where to begin. But since it will be a work in progress for a while yet, I am sure that I’ll have it figured out. Eventually.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.