Keep Left and Finally! some tourist time

Keep Left -

Driving on the left side of the road is not a huge problem, although there are mini traffic circles nearly everywhere, and gauging the distance from the right hand side driver seat to the left side of the car has proven tricky, but I'm always just a friendly honk away from correcting ;)  I had previously driven in London, and don't recall that being a problem either ( aside from the massive traffic circles ).  My joke about "the trick is more in learning to drive upside down" has resulted in exclusively blank stares.  I don't think that they don't get it, I'm just starting to suspect that it's not actually all that funny ( turns out you just velcro the change into your pocket ).

More difficult than remembering to drive on the left, is walking on the left.  Much like we drive on the right, and walk in lanes in the right, and the standing lane on escalators is on the right, it all is just sort of flipped to the other side here.  In grocery stores and on sidewalks, and I admit that hadn't really occurred to me.  I can't recall if that was the case in London as well?  Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but when I drift to the right in the grocery store, escalator, or sidewalk, I just start bumping into people and creating congestion.  Nobody is rude about it, and I don't think anyone gives it much thought, but that's just the "wrong" side.   It will also apparently take awhile for me to remember to look the correct direction when crossing the streets, and in the meantime, my helicopter parenting style has me grasping the kids hands a little tightly while we get it sorted....

Also, the turn signal is on the right hand side of the steering wheel, which means that my windshield wiper is frequently called into duty to indicate that I am about to turn.  I think the other drivers are starting to catch on to my style, though, so no worries there.  I'm pretty sure the windshield-wiper-i'm-about-to-turn thing is going to go international....

Tourist day -

We finally settled in enough with time and house hunting duties to take a couple of tourist trips.  After I failed to select the appropriate lane for Manly Beach, and we found ourselves at the Opera House, my very flexible family and I parked the car in the car park, popped our gear out of the boot, and we were off to the Opera House tour!  Xander seemed genuinely intrigued, Milo was bored out of his skull, and kept trying to climb everything and linger behind the group to see what was breakable.  Thankfully, not much was, and aside from a few nervous glances from the tour guide, we were good to go ( which I found appalling from her punk rock hairdo; she should have been more appreciative of Milo's "I'm not a part of your system" attitude ).

Note Xander posing next to the "don't climb on this wall" sign.  I'd give him a hard time about it, but then, I took the picture, didn't I?

From the beer patio lunch venue near the Opera, we caught sight of Luna Park, a renovated historical coney-island style park.  A heavy sigh later, we trundled over, and absolutely froze our butts off ( we did not really have the right jackets for winter, which is cold like a San Francisco summer ), but the kids had a great time.  Once I found the pub with live music onsite, you could visibly note an improvement in my condition.

The House Hunt continues....

Looking for rental places in the eastern suburbs is tricky.  There's not much on the market, and what is there that is nice is expensive.  We did find a few great places, and the one that should have been out of our reach but was oddly affordable was snatched up by someone who makes, roughly, 3X per year what I do....  So, probably not a difficult eval by the owners.

SCHOOL!!

Today we are off to the "welcome new families" breakfast with the headmaster at Lycee Condorcet in Maroubra.  We're very excited to finally get the kids out of our hair some much needed socialization, and to start getting them settled into our new life here.  School starts for them on August 16th, as this is one of the few schools in Sydney that follows the northern hemisphere school year.  In Sydney, it's a January to December school year, but with lots of month long breaks scattered about.  It's actually a reasonable  approach, and the French School has tried to mirror a few of the big holidays, while keeping the longer school day and shorter school year.  The school itself feels very familiar to us, and would to our friends at Dallas International School as well.

Will check in later...  BUY YOUR PLANE TICKETS!!!