[bigiain]

I'm pretty good at this at home in the southern hemisphere, but I'm much worse when visiting the northern hemisphere and the sun "goes the wrong way"...

My instinctive sense of direction doesn't work with "the sun in the south midday" thing, and I need to pull that up into the intellectual part of my brain all the time.

"Ummm, I'm in SF, if the sun's over _there_ and it's mid morning that much be, ummm, south east-ish I think. Yeah. So north must be (turns around) _that_ way".

I _never_ end up thinking those things at home, I just "know" which way north is. It doesn't even occur to me to question how or why I know that.

[KineticLensman]

Yes. I live at 50° North so can assume that the Sun is always in the southern half of the sky and always goes from left to right across the sky (as you look at it). So if it's sunny I can make a good guess at the compass directions, especially if I know the time. I can reverse this process, e.g. in South Africa, with a bit of thought. The Sun still seems 'wrong' though.

Where I get confused is the equator, where my simple rules don't work.

[xarope]

I know how you feel. I used to live in OZ, and when I visited NYC, I'd always end up going in the opposite direction of where I was supposed to go (and no, taking the opposite of the direction I "felt" I should go, didn't work either... haha)