Driving Chapter 2 (or 3 or 5)

Well, here I am back again. It has been a little while since I have blogged. It has been an eventful week. Not 'things happening around me' wise. More the internal things. But since I promised this next one would be more light hearted, I will keep to that!! :-) Today, I took my driving test!! The actual driving part. I was thinking of writing yesterday but I was a bit nervous and 'ferhoodled' as the Amish say. I haven't slept well the last couple nights - worrying about the test and other things. I've just gotta stop that!! Soo, I got the message yesterday what time my test was going to be. You see, they can't plan ahead of time here. You sign up 2 weeks ahead of time, but find out the day before when you actually have to be there!! Sooo, my test was scheduled at 10:20 this morning. Well, I can't just DRIVE to the test center because I am illegal!! I have to take public transport to the driving school (about 1 1/2 hours from my door to there) then the driving instructor picks us up and we drive 30 minutes to the test center which is TOTALLY on the OPPOSITE side of town than I live. Madrid area has about 6 million inhabitants. Sam is in Germany and I didn't want to wait until he got back to schedule it - I just wanted to get it over with! So I found someone who could drive me to the train station. I caught the 7am train. I wanted to make sure I wasn't stressed with getting there late so I actually arrived an hour ahead of time!! So I went to get a coffee and try to relax before I had to go. There was just one other lady who took it that day too. She is Russian married to an American who works in Madrid. Welcome to my life. :-) Living in the 'expat' community. She was in my intensive driving classes in June so we knew each other slightly. A very nice lady about my age. We both failed!! When you take your test, the examiner sits in the back seat behind the passenger side. He watches like a hawk everything you do from how you turn the wheel to how you shift to how you signal to how much you look over your shoulder and the list goes on and on. The driving instructor sits in the front seat with you and the other person sits in the back behind the driver - sweating bullets for when it's their turn!! When I had to sign the paper before I pulled out, my hands were shaking so much, my signature is a bit wobbly!! I went first. The other lady got some practice driving over. Our poor driving instructor had come down with the flu that her little boy had last week. She had been vomiting during the night, had a headache but no fever!! I finally calmed down once I got going. I just kept telling myself 'you know how to drive.' 'You know how to do this.' And I do. It DID take me 3 times to do the parallel parking. Oh well, third time is a charm!! But I guess I had already failed by then because I didn't stop enough at the stop sign right before I turned right to parallel park. It was really cute though. My driving instructor, who was sitting beside me in the front on the passenger side kept giving me little hand signals like 'slow down' or 'back up'. It was cute. I didn't know she was going to be doing that. She had to do it right on her lap close up to her body so the guy wouldn't see!! She said he was a grumpy instructor and had a Napoleon Complex because he was short. :-) She was quite angry that he failed me on that minor thing - especially since I had done it right the first time around!! It made me feel better that she was irritated on my behalf. Her name is Lourdes and she was living in England and they just moved back to Spain in the summer. She has lived there 9 years I believe and is the only driving instructor in all of Madrid who teaches the theory in English. No one else has an instructor that can speak English!! Welcome to Spain!! So, after failing, we drove back to the driving school to pay for the test next week. We are both retaking in next Wed. or Thurs. We don't know which day because it's supposed to be Wed. but there is a general strike called for that day. If the strike is not put off or cancelled, we will have to take it on Thurs! It's the same with the week after. And that is Thanksgiving week so don't want to do that!! We have to pay almost $175 more to take it again because we failed. Yes, THAT's the part I REALLY don't like. But what can ya do??? The driving instructor said he made a comment about foreign driver's who have bad habits!! I don't think they are bad habits. We just drive differently. But this gentleman has probably never driven outside of Spain so I try to be patient. So, here we go again. But I think I WILL feel better about it the next time - not so terrified. :-) It was a bit ridiculous how nervous I was. Well, I may blog again in a couple days on what else is going on. Superficially and deep inside. Hugs from here!! Jill