A Piece of Rural Iraq

When I was heading over here a lot of people kept telling me they thought I was crazy. While most of those people were talking about the cultural differences I would experience, a few thought I was nutters because they assumed I was moving to the middle of the desert and would probably mark my address in relation to which sand dunes I was stuck between.

Fact: Not all of Iraq is a desert. In fact, there are mountainous highlands, valleys, marshes, and grasslands in addition to the desert which lies in the southwest part of the country.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a friend's family home in a small village in the mountains near the Turkish border. We all know how much I love villages.

Come back to Texas

Despite the fact that I'm not traveling right now I figured I could probably manage to entertain you with the few things that have been going on around here.

I arrived in Houston Wednesday afternoon and my dad picked my up at the airport there. We decided it would be much more economical for him to simply pick me up in Houston and drive me back to Austin. Besides, then he got a whole two and a half hours with me all by himself. 

The first thing I did was nearly die of heat exhaustion when we walked out the elevator doors onto the roof of the parking garage. The Texas sun was beating down, as expected, and it was a clear, sunny 88°F. 

It was 34°F when I left Prague 14 hours before so I'm sure you can imagine how that felt. I tried to dress in layers so I could strip off the extra when I got to Texas, but we all know that effort is futile. You just can't get cool in Texas unless Texas wants you to.