Everything is backwards

So I'm driving to the local mall, which is maybe 2 kilometers away. It's been about 15 months, but I've only *driven* to the mall once; I've walked once. I'm scanning through bad radio stations and settle on one in Spanish (I only took one semester of Spanish, but was immersed in San Francisco - MEXICAN Spanish). Wait. Maybe this isn't Spanish, maybe it's Portugese. There are more Portugese in my neighborhood than Spanish. I haven't heard enough Portugese, and my Spanish isn't good enough to know which it is. There are lots of Spanish words.

I go the way I *know* I can get to the mall, but as I turn left, I think the road going straight might be more direct. I'll look at the map and try it later.

After I leave the mall, it seems the radio station is now in Chinese. Because I've gone around in a circle in the mall, I'm no longer sure of my directions, and I don't really know the street names surrounding the mall, but there are exits in two different directions. I end up taking a different exit than I came in, and guessing at which way I need to go on the road. It seems like I've only driven a couple of blocks, but nothing looks familiar, so I feel like I need to head back the other direction. It's not convenient to pull over and start up my phone navigation. For some reason, it is starting to dawn on me that the radio isn't in Chinese, it's in Korean. I don't know Korean, Mandarin, nor Cantonese, but I hung out with a Korean friend in high school, and my co-workers used to speak (do I have this right?) Mandarin?

I spot a familiar business sign and realize I'm way off track on my way home. I try to cut back, but end up in a maze of one-lane streets with cars parked tightly on either side. Finally, I'm at a dead-end alley with only one direction to go. I turn on the phone navigation, and see that I'm about 3 kilometers out of my way, meaning I'm 5 kilometers from home, when the mall is only 2 kilometers from my house. The phone directs me in a very unfamiliar route, and I drive for 3 kilometers wondering (it's happened before) if my phone really knows where I am.

Finally, I see a familiar business sign and realize I'm headed in the right direction. I am not in Sydney - I am in the convoluted suburbs of Sydney. Even the main roads are laid out like the winding streets of a new housing development in the US (but not as wide). You end up in cul-de-sacs and can't figure out how the hell you got in there, because the houses all look the same (in the US, but the neighborhoods in the Innerwest also look similar). The street names aren't marked well, and streets end and change their name, or dead end, requiring work-arounds to get from point A to point B.

When I get in my car again, the radio announcer is speaking in some Eastern European language. It's amusing, but sometimes you'd just like to hear English, or decent music. I wonder if it's not just the streets, but the fact that the sun is in the north, not the south. It seems I've been here long enough, and that's consistent enough, that I would have adapted to it.