Everything in Australia seems to be backwards. The light switches are off when they're up, on when they're down.  The seasons are the opposite because it's in the southern hemisphere.  The days are almost completely opposite, I typically wake up around 7 AM, and back home it's 4 PM the previous day.  The most challenging thing about Australia being "backwards" is the driving, as you probably know, cars drive on the left hand side of the street.

After only 4 days of riding in cars on a side that is completely foreign to me, I was told I get to drive.  While I was learning to drive on the left, I was simultaneously learning to drive a stick, and how to drive in traffic circles.

I was in a little yellow car with the lives of TJ Anderson, Michael Parker (the pastor at the church I'm working for), and Michael's son, Caleb, all in my hands.  Duped into thinking this was simply a trip to the aquarium, we were all in for a much scarier adventure.  The first few blocks did not go that well, I kept "kangaroo hopping" and killing the engine.  TJ took a supportive approach for the first half hour, lying to me and saying things like, "You're doing great," or, "You can do it."

The lies were great, I was complimented for doing nearly nothing right, but that all changed.  Michael took a more Simon Cowell approach.  After another one of TJ's lies, Michael said, "I've had enough of your American coddling, that was awful."  And just like that, the criticism and insults started flowing.  The last few kilometers to the aquarium were brutal, but I eventually started shifting smooth.

We finally arrived at the aquarium after a frightening experience in a parking lot full of pedestrians and small inattentive children.

Inside the aquarium was amazing though, we saw a whole bunch of fish that are native to Australia's west coast, including a few sharks.  There was a moving walk way in a glass tunnel under water where we saw sea turtles, sharks, sting rays, an eel, and hundreds of fish.  We rode around in it twice, awestruck by the grace of the fish around us.  Towards the end of our second time around, we started hearing shouts instead of the hypnotizing music that was being played for us.  There was a family of 3 sitting on a bench in front of a window that looks into the aquarium.  The child had to be only a year or two old, and looked very frightened, not by the sharks, but by the way his family was behaving.  Every time something remotely interesting would swim passed everybody would shout, fake a smile, and see if they got a good family picture.  Somebody from their group was tapping the glass and tried to call the sharks, another was taking the picture with a third behind the camera making bizarre and eerie faces at the child to try to get him to smile.  The kid burst into tears with all of the commotion, but chaos would not be interrupted, it continued as we walked to the next part of the exhibit with the noise slowly fading away.

The rest of the aquarium was pretty interesting too.  There was a pool of small sting rays that you can touch, with a sign above it that said, "no pinching, no grabbing, no biting."  I thought that sign was strange, because the only people that would be stupid enough to bite a fish from this pool, probably couldn't read the sign that instructed against it.

By the end of it I had completely forgotten that I had to drive when we got out.  Everything was going smoothly on the road though; lurching was becoming less and less frequent, and it was almost a rarity.  Then I was at a stop light, and killed the engine when the light turned green.  I panicked, hastily started the car again, and killed it again.  After killing it twice more, I made it through the light, being the only one in my lane to make it through.  Everybody passing me was staring at me like I was some inexperienced american driver.

We finally made it back to the house, and I killed the engine right as I was pulling in the driveway.  All's well that ends well I guess.  I hate Shakespeare.