Keeping to the Right..... and Being Wrong

As I looked at the calendar today, I realised I've been in Australia for a month, which seems absolutely unbelievable since it still feels like I've only just arrived. During my interviews and my apartment hunting, I've had to keep reminding myself that "only just arrived" works well for a given amount of time, a limited given amount of time. I think it may be about time for me to drop that phrase when telling people how long I've been in Oz.

I'm almost certain that the fact that I've already split my time between Sydney and Melbourne has further hindered my ability to fully grasp the number of days that have passed as in my opinion, two weeks anywhere isn't long enough for a place to feel like home. After a fortnight, Sydney just started to feel that way to me and now that I've been in Melbourne for that long, it's beginning to have the same effect. I love the feeling of a place that was once strange and foreign slowly growing increasingly familiar. It really is a wonderfully beautiful thing to witness.

Even though I've been here for a month already, there are some aspects of Australia to which I'm still adapting, one of them being the fact that cars drive on the left side of the road. In London and in Sydney, many of the roads, especially the main ones, conveniently have painted on the ground which way a pedestrian should look for cars before crossing the street. I couldn't possibly count all the times these simple white letters saved my life during my first few months in London.

Thankfully, I haven't had too much trouble remembering which side of the road cars drive on in Melbourne [although I will admit that I do look both ways more times than anyone should just to be sure I don't mistakenly wander into oncoming traffic], but I did have a minor incident when I was going into town earlier this week. While I was walking along the sidewalk, a bicycler and I were about to cross paths. As he got closer, I naturally stepped to the side to avoid a painful collision....... but out of habit, I moved to the right instead of the left, which clearly clashed with his way of thinking as he nearly ran me over anyway before scolding, "Keep to the left!"

Lesson learned.