Kentucky Bound

Though we have a few months left to carry out more work in Guadalajara, we spent this past week focusing on our next move- to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Josh accepted a job as a professional-in-residence at Western Kentucky University teaching photojournalism and multimedia. WKU offers one of the best visual journalism programs in the country, and Josh will be in the thick of it come 2009-2010 school year. I spent the past week searching for an "in" to the university as well and could likely begin with an adjunct position at the school.

Thus, we flew into Nashville (one hour south) and drove the quiet, clean stretch into Bowling Green, population 55,000 (with 20,000 students) on a Sunday evening. Having become accustomed to readily available food at just about any hour on most street corners in Guadalajara, we had to dig a little deeper in Bowling Green. We appropriately ended up at a college bar and pizza joint and enjoyed tasty pale ales after months of drinking light beer. We were fortunate to stay with Mac, a writing professor in the journalism department who kindly offered his spare bedroom during our house hunt and my job search in the city. He was over the top accommodating for us and even packed a lunch for us to take on our flight back to Guadalajara. We had great conversations with him about the city and school, and his enthusiasm about his students made Josh's decision to teach at WKU seem even better.

Both Josh and I have wanted to live in a college town, and our short experience in BG made this notion more concrete. This move will be bittersweet, as there are many we have grown close to in Roanoke, and we love the Appalachian mountains and our 100-year-old home. My job at North Cross School was a good one, and might be a little tough to match. But this initial trip reassured us that this decision was a good one, and we embrace having much to learn and discover in the coming months.

Evidently the students in the photojournalism program were large supporters of Josh during his interview process, and at an end-of-the-year picnic with photo students we found it was apparent they are excited about his arrival in the fall.