As the saying goes, ”the first impression is the last impression”.
My first impression of Australia was that everything was inside out. Specially the traffic, which is the opposite from Brazil, it was very confusing, even though I rarely drive here. I almost got run over a couple of times when trying to cross streets, simply because I was looking in one direction and cars were coming from the opposite direction… Do you know what I mean?
So the driver sits on the right hand side of cars in Australia. I got it. But many times I saw a dog or a child on the left hand side of the car and got myself scared: “Oh my God! There’s a dog/child driving that car!” And two seconds later, realized that my mind was still thinking people drive on the left hand side.
Takes a while until you get used to it. You grow up with your mum saying you need to look at both sides of the road before crossing it, but you get used to look at one direction, and once I came here, because the traffic moves in the opposite direction, I often looked the wrong way. Very confusing!
One thing I’ve done over and over again, as a passenger, was to try to get in the car through the right hand side door, where actually that’s the drivers sit. Thank God I’m getting used to it. At least I think so. And slowly, trying to drive again, once a month. I’m learning the way from our place to the supermarket. It’s funny I know. But it’s already something, isn’t it?
Can you imagine how to drive through a roundabout in the opposite way?
