The Squirrels are Exhausted

Taken by my uncle in Dallas.

I arrived in the United States exactly 365 days after I left. I spent a great week with friends in Washington DC, and then flew back to Austin, Texas. This summer has been a brutally hot one in Texas, with strings of 110+ degree days and wildfires destroying large tracts of land and homes around Austin. These days the grass and trees are still dead and brown, but it has started to get a little bit cooler. Like the heat exhaustion-inflicted squirrels, for the past couple weeks I have been lying around listlessly for much of the day. Reverse culture shock took me by surprise - maybe I should call it familiarity shock; it is the uncomfortable feeling that time is out of place, that I have suddenly woken up and all of the last year has been a dream. But my friends have slowly been drawing me out of that feeling.