Here’s how:

The sky is insanely big: At one point we were watching a sunset that went on 360 degrees around us. It was like being under a dome of sunset. Sample picture:

The grass is insanely green: Really, it’s like Technicolor green. Or color-corrected-in-Photoshop green. I didn’t even know it came in that color.

It’s insanely humid: The humidity sucks, period. My hair is limp, I’m getting zits from all the sunscreen, I have to shower every day, and I start feeling faint if I walk in it too long. I am a delicate English rose that needs to be fanned and fed grapes. I am not a Texas cactus!

There are bugs everywhere: We pull up on our first night in Texas to the American Inn, a truck stop motel in a dry county that doesn’t believe in street lights, and there is a bug orgy going on. In front of the hotel, giant black beetles, yellow grasshoppers, and black crickets are crawling. In the gas station behind us, there are so many moths, I wonder how people can stand to get gas with them bashing into the lights above their heads. All day long, butterflies have been committing suicide on our windshield. Piles of dead black beetles are in front of every gas station, and I don’t know if they are cockroaches or what, because as far as I know, we don’t have cockroaches in California. When I ask Kyle, he calls me sheltered and says that other places in the world have bugs.

People are really nice: They are friendly and cheerful. Although they are not my style, cowboy hats make sense in this heat.

Men stare at women here: Men look at women everywhere in the world, but here they stare and stare. They don’t even bother to look at your face–they go straight for the boobs. Very aggressive staring in Texas.

Lattes are hoity-toity: I figured Starbucks had taken over the world by now and therefore there would be espresso everywhere. But not in Texas, noooo.

That is all.

A Texas town