Tomorrow we get to sign our lease for our house and begin moving in!!!! yipee!!!!
Sadly, that means that we will be without internet access for an undetermined period of time... I'm hoping for less than a week, but who knows.
I know there hasn't really been much to read lately anyway, so I guess it wont be much different, lol. This last week was very busy and much of my days were spent sitting in Area Orientation, Inter Cultural Relations, and traffic safety training. However, I finally finished it all on Friday, spent yesterday running a million errands, okay I'm exaggerating, and passed my driven test. I am now a licensed to drive on the left side of the road driver!! What in interesting experience it was hoping into the right hand side of a car to drive and having the first time doing so be for my test... Luckily, all you really need to do to pass is make sure you stop at the line for stop signs and make sure you turn into the correct lane when you take a corner. They like for you to be able to back into a parking spot, but to my knowledge wont fail you if you cant.
The reason for backing into a parking spot is actually quite smart, and I had never thought of it before. When you pull out of a parking spot in reverse, your angle of vision is only about 5 degrees or so if I remember correctly from the class, however, if you are pulling out forward, you start with about 60 - 90 degrees of vision and as you pull more forward your angle of vision opens up, making you much less likely to be in an accident while pulling out of your parking spot. Here on base (where most people still park forward into spaces) 65 -75% of accidents are in parking lots and involve one vehicle that was backing out of a parking spot... hmmm...
Okay, there's my safety tip for the day, lol!!
I plan to be back here telling interesting, I hope, tales very soon.
will miss ur posts
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting about the parking - it's the same in Europe. People back into parking spaces. Wifey was amazed when she found out, as nobody seems to do it in America.
ReplyDeleteWhen we returned, we intended to back into spaces to be safer, but it's not so easy with other cars trying to steal your space or get past you (New Jersey's mall parking lots are a free-for-all) and as I drive a Lincoln Town Car, I've got quite a lot of vehicular arse to wrangle.
Good luck on your move! Hopefully you hadn't settled in too much on base, so it'll be easier than when you moved to Japan in the first place!
Yay - did you get that house you described? Can't wait to see photos!
ReplyDeleteDriving on the "wrong" side of the car and on the "wrong" side of the road must take some getting used to I bet.
Funny, I have always back in to parking spaces for that same reason!