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4. PHOTOS COURTESY OF KIM AKHAVAN
Memory lane. 1. Akhavan and her son at the Queen Mary’s winter wonderland in Long Beach. 2. Akhavan and her husband on a family vacation. 3. Akhavan at the beach during a family vacation. 4. Akhavan and her family during Chrismas time.
English teacher Kim Akhavan finds pleasure in making memories while spending time with her family during her free time as told to Chris Paludi
I don’t have much free time. Lately I’ve been getting off my second job kind of late and I want to go out because it’s Friday night, so my husband, my kid, and I have started going to hotel lobbies. It’s funny; we hang out, play songs on the jukebox, and eat or drink something while we people- watch and try to make up little stories about what the people are doing there. My four year old son loves this -- he brings a couple toys and we sort of treat it as our living room for the moment. My son’s a trip. Right now, he’s all about Greek mythology. He wants to hear the Medusa story seven times a day because I mean hey, it’s a lady with snakes in her hair. When
you’re four, that’s as awesome as it gets. He’s morbid; he loves anything freaky or scary. Before my husband and I go out at night on the weekends with friends, we’ll come home, he’ll sleep for a couple of hours and I’ll grade papers. Grading is not fun. I have a confession: I will kind of half-listen to football while I’m grading sometimes, but that’s about as much distraction as I can tolerate. One thing I haven’t had time to do for a while is I’ll go on what I call bus adventures. Bus adventures are where I pick a destination and I try to get there using only public transportation. I take as long as it takes to do it and talk to random people along the
Phil the builder by Chandler Ross
For most teachers, accomplishment means having their students pass their class. For history teacher Phil Comito, that feeling extended to having accomplished building a cabin. Over the summer, Comito and his wife built a cabin in the land that he owns up in Orcas Islands located in Northwestern Washington. “I’ve learned that I’m capable of more than I thought and it has encouraged me to do other things that most people would view as a challenge,” Comito said. According to Comito when he and his wife traveled to the island, they slept in tents, but realized it was time for a change. “We wanted a little bit more room and a permanent structure where we could go to in the summer. We wanted a place where we could store everything,” Comito said. Without any construction experience, Comito figured out how to build a cabin. “I had to figure it all out, I’ve never really built anything in my life. Along the way, I reached out to people for help,” Comito said.
of it and everything about it, so I’ll just pick an undiscovered land and try to get there and see what happens along the way. I like feeling like I’m on vacation even when I’m not. I call it a ‘staycation.’ I’ve been teaching here about a decade and I’ve been married 17 years. I feel like there’s always novelty in my husband’s perspectives and there’s an endless amount of things to talk about with each other. We keep it fresh. Being married for a long time has a certain amount of security and predictability, but what keeps people together after such a long time is still feeling like there’s something new. That’s also true for life: there’s always something new.
way. I woke up one day and decided to do it. It’s a good escape to go on adventures with my family and it’s the type of quality time that you just don’t get at home because you’re making memories together. My best times are with my family. I love my time at school and the connections I make with students and I take that feeling of really liking people and being interested in what makes them tick to connect my teaching with things I do with my family. My grandmother always said that travel is the best education. If you take a traveler’s mindset, there’s no end to what you can discover about people and places. I love Los Angeles. I want to know every square inch
Comito, along with friends and family, spent the summer building a cabin
According to Comito, he and his wife bonded throughout the process. “There are always been differences and disagreements in relationships. We’ve always overcome those differences and figured them out. We are really close together and this is an experience we share and appreciate,” Comito said. According to Comito’s wife, Christine Comito, building the cabin was difficult, but brought her and Comito closer together. “Building a cabin is hard, but it is a lot like building a marriage. So much love, hard work, confidence, support, problem solving, and pure joy went into our summer days. Each day it got stronger, each day we shared laughs, discussed our problems, and went to sleep beaming with love and pride for what we had done together,” Christine said. Eventually, Comito plans to do small renovations, but does not plan on expanding and making the cabin bigger. “We built this cabin instead to be our permanent structure and over the course of the last year, we’ve really come to love living in small spaces. It’s really fun and you have
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to be really creative. I love it,” Comito said. Comito says he has found that building this cabin gave him confidence. “It’s a really fulfilling experience and it gave me a sense of confidence that I did have some building skills, something I never thought I had,” Comito said. Comito now wants to accomplish more hands-on projects and continue to challenge himself. “Next summer hopefully we can learn
2. PHOTOS COURTESY OF PHIL COMITO
From scratch. 1.The cabin a few stages before completion. 2. Comito, his wife, and their dog standing in front of their new cabin.
how to sail. I have this sense of confidence now that I didn’t have before hand that I can do it. I think you learn a lot by challenging yourself in uncomfortable situations and experiences,” Comito said.
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