Learning to drive

My mom always said that you should learn something new everyday. But when you move to a new country, the learning curve is tremendous. You learn a ton of new things each day. Of course we are learning a lot just by looking at menus, sampling food, walking around, etc. But today I am proud to announce that I am learning something BIG: how to drive a stick shift vehicle! I only drove automatic before, but our rental car is stick shift, and that's all we are going to have for the next few weeks. Dan only works 3 miles from our house, so he could run to work, but if I want to go anywhere I can either learn to drive or take all 3 kids on a bicycle with me. So... driving sounds like a good idea. Dan let me practice with the rental car, and it actually went very well, after the first few choppy circles around the block. I drove from base to our new house and didn't stall once. :-) We are looking to buy a new car for Dan while we are here. He would use it for work, but it would also be our good gas mileage car for weekend trips, so I should know how to drive it, and most options are stick shift here. So I will keep practicing until I feel comfortable enough to drive in town, with pedestrians walking into the street, people parking in the middle of the road, traffic circles every hundred feet, and unexpected 1-way streets. Oh, and with 3 kids sitting side by side in the back seat. Yeah, might take a little more practice for that to be a safe scenario! But I am glad that after years of Dan promising me driving lessons we finally got around to it. :-)