I’m on …whatever level, and definitely it’s hard to read NHK News Web Easy. Extremely hard. I’m going to come back at that at level 25 – I think things start rolling a bit better once one has enough kanji under the belt, but definitely not before somewhere between 20 and 30. And I’m the same with listening comprehension speed – it’s slow going for sure and that’s natural. That’s so great you’re doing iTalki!
Thank you for the good wishes! I wish you the best of luck as well! And endurance. 
P.S. Hey, check this out – thanks to @FireFairy:
So that’s encouraging! Stick with it – I’m doing 5 lessons per day now, but at my “full speed” capacity I was doing 10-15 lessons per day. Going slow is good.