By the time you read this, dear reader, I will be either packing for or on a flight to the US. The preparation for the trip was quite easy as I’m quite a seasoned traveler to the US. What was not so easy was the follow-up for Inkreadable. I’d forgotten, dear reader, how difficult it is to work with other people. I don’t mean to teach other people. I mean having other people help you get stuff done. On Tuesday last week, I had a meeting with Enigmart, the people who host my website. They are located in Greece and their prices are reasonable. But I had to have a meeting with them because they did not understand what I wanted done with my website. As a result, nothing had been done. After our meeting, I was assured that they would have everything done by the end of the week. But as of this writing, I have not heard anything about my website nor have I received an invoice. It’s annoying because I would like to start advertising as soon as possible because people typically start looking for courses in July and August for September. Generally, the freelancer language market tends to follow the academic year. Because of course, the clients aren’t going to come pouring in right away. All of this advertising will take some time. And I could have been running campaigns for at least a month because that’s how long they have had the translation of my website.
Over at the English Center things are starting to pick up a bit which is fortunate for them but not quite so fortunate for me as I will have to cover one of the employees while she and I are both away. It makes being in the US a little bit difficult as I now need to drag my computer with me everywhere. It’ll be fine but they’ve got a couple of big projects that need sorting out. One is a 40-hour intensive that will start this week and the other is an in-company course that they need sorted by September. I won’t be teaching either of those courses because the English Center will never give me an in-company and I’m in the US to do different things this week so teaching is going to have to take a little bit of a break. I am also going to be in charge of answering visa query questions where people from foreign countries ask if we can help them obtain a visa to take a language course. We can’t. I’m also going to be in charge of low-level queries as well as dealing with my usual scheduling duties. So it’s a few more hours and a bit more money from the English Center. But it’s also temporary and will only be for the next couple of weeks. Last evening, I had my final class with Imres and it was bittersweet. I am proud of their confidence and how far they have come in a few short weeks. I also had a meeting with Flowently and Imres HR and while most of the meeting was positive, I am waiting for feedback from the students which I hate getting through the schools. So I am on tether hooks a bit. I also told FLowently that the current class wants to stay in contact and maybe meet once a quarter. She seems ok with it in the meeting but then called to tell me that that could only happen under the auspices of Flowently and Imres. I am not sure that it will turn into anything but we will have to see.
In my private client world, I’m taking a break from all of my students, except for George and Jerry. I’m kind of looking forward to the break but I’ve also packed it full with trying to see everybody that I don’t get a chance to see when I am there at Christmas. Because at Christmas nobody has time to see me until after the Christmas holiday and then there’s like five days before I come back to the Netherlands and I have to squeeze everybody in.
On Sunday evening a few members of my writers’ group got together in Alkmaar for a spot of writing, some dinner, and beer. It was a great evening but I will say that having gotten back to Amsterdam at 11:30 at night I was too tired to do anything else. Still, I had too many things that I needed to do and was struggling to get them Sunday night, after I got back. I don’t really love jumping out of bed and starting my day without doing my morning routine so trying to get a jump on at least sending certIficates out for Flowently and editing this blog. I left the in-company task until yesterday. Which I chipped away at when I could. I have come to the conclusion that while I love writing sessions that are away from Amsterdam, I do not love them on a Sunday evening. Note to self: next time do a distance writing session on a Saturday. I know that my Co-organizer Mark agreed because he too was exhausted by the time we got to Amsterdam.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there’s more to come.