Since I have all this free time

I have taken on two new things.

Seriously, I am beginning to get tired, y'all. I begin to think I will never get my driver's license because every time I pick up the book to figure out the difference between a bike path and a bike-and-moped path something happens.

But I also have to get out of the house, and I really think I am in danger of becoming a recluse if I don't do something. So I figured I would do whatever presented itself. Really, I just decided that I would look around and if anything came up I would just say yes and see what happened.

I expect that since Fall has appeared in earnest I will become more motivated on the driver's license front soon. Nel is very upset about my bicycling in the rain. I don't mind it very much but I think I shall mind bicycling in the cold rain (or the sleet and hail and snow) quite a lot. Fall really is here in earnest. I know this because the heaters came on at night. And this time it only took me two days of wheezing and coughing to remember that it isn't a cold or a return of the evil walking pneumonia, it's that I have an annual reaction to the heat coming on at night and to put out the humidifiers.

This is an improvement over the, what was it, two weeks? That it took me last year.

Anyway, I am now singing with a gospel choir. It's real gospel, not blues gospel, which I would prefer. But hey, they tour and compete and everything. Gospel is all the rage over here. I would link the website for the choir except it's all in Dutch. (Ever see an all white gospel choir? It seems very odd to me but there you are).

The director is eyeing me oddly as I sang the first time with the sopranos and the next time with the altos, but they have too many altos so I shifted over to the tenors. Nice to find out I still have my vocal range, anyway. Though my soprano voice is not what it once was, too much fast living I imagine. I am informed she is planning to give me a vocal test to figure out where I really ought to be, as the answer I wrote down (where do you need a voice?) was probably not what they had in mind.

I am also going tomorrow to give my first lesson in conversational english. I didn't mean to do this, which means (if my life thus far is any evidence) that I will soon be doing it a lot. Here's how it went: Douwe has started swimming lessons. Daan is on a wait list, for a new class of Absolute Beginners.

During swimming lessons the parents all go and sit in this glass front viewing area above the pool. (Of course it's an indoor pool, they don't have outdoor pools around here as far as I can make out). So there I was sitting like that and I struck up a conversation with one of the other moms. She is muslim (I had assumed as she was wearing a head scarf) and we got into cultural differences regarding religion with your spouse. Like me, she and her spouse are of the same faith but from different countries. She was born here in Holland I gather and her husband elsewhere.

You know me, always keeping the conversation on a safe subject, strictly small talk, you know.

Somewhere in there we got into the Immigrant Experience and the learning of languages. She is now studying English I gather but having trouble with the conversational part. Then she just up and asked me if I would teach her. So I told her I did not have the first teaching credential (credentials being a very big thing around here) but that I knew several people in the english club who did. Nope, she said, she already had teachers with credentials; she wanted somebody she was not afraid to talk to.

Well, I said, I promise to tell you a hum'rous anecdote about my own verbal screw ups in Dutch for every one you make in English and then we'll be even. I'll have some left over, never fear.

Hell, I had one this week. The kids' school had a "studiedag" listed on the calendar. This means "Study day" and I thought no more than "oh, good, about time they got some studying done". Really, if I thought about it at all, (which I did not) I would have thought that they were getting ready for the various regular tests the different classes do. Douwe's class has one coming up in the next couple of months.

I should have thought of it when I woke them up and Daan said "We don't have school today, I want to sleep". But Daan has some variant of that every single day. His nose itches, he's sick, his shoes are wet (liked that one), whatever, he never wants to get up. Gets it from his dad no doubt. Slugabed.

So off we went to school and as it happens it was pouring buckets that morning. Um, "studiedag" translates as "teacher workday". So off we went back home. Duh.

In any event. Tomorrow I will be across town setting up a course of lessons in English conversation. And if I can figure out what to charge her, that would be good too. She certainly is planning to pay me but she probably has a better idea than I have what it costs. Oh, well, I guess I'll call the english club ladies and ask them.