The Long, Long Journey

I'm driving off to Sun Valley for a significant portion of tomorrow. Raise your hand if you know where Sun Valley is.

Anyone? Anyone? Didn't think so.

I had no idea where it was, either. Turns out it's a little place smushed up between Studio City, Burbank, and other Hollywood-esque suburbs, so I'm off in Devin's old digs. I'm teaching an English Lit class for Christian Community College there--they have a little satellite campus out there, sharing space with a mechanic's garage.

Not precisely what I would have chosen. This last year teaching for CCC has been great--the classes I've taught for them have had motivated and polite students and small class sizes (in the spring I had a class of 4), I got to teach an English and a World Lit, and I got to talk about my faith and beliefs openly and discuss and debate them with students, which was terrific.

I've known all along it was temporary. Their usual English teacher was in a terrible accident last summer (he was also part of a search and rescue crew and was in a car accident on their way to help a lost hiker; he's also a youth pastor. I feel pretty low in comparison) and was unable to teach for them. I've really been his replacement this last year.

Now he's able to come back. Talk about schadenfreude. I mean, it's great that he's back and I wouldn't want any less for him and his family. But man, it's hard not to be at the Redlands campus. CCC was nice enough to hire me to teach out at Sun Valley, but now I've got a two hour commute rather than a thirty minute one. I'll get home at midnight on Thursdays now. They're paying mileage (for all the good that will do me these days--curse California and its horrible gasoline distrubution network!) and I'm still grateful for the chance to work for them at all, but... man.

I suppose, compared to the troubles of the rest of the nation and the world at the moment, these complaints are all petty. I know.

Still... man.