After spending the last year and a half in Southeast Asia, and also Europe (mostly France), our recent return to the U.S. felt… strange.

We recognized this feeling, this sense of disorientation, as mild culture shock, which, I might point out, had nothing to do with the fact that we happened to arrive when a new president was taking office in the face of overwhelming opposition and resistance. (That was just regular shock, although it did add a strange dimension to the timing of our return.) [Read more…]