Driving training, part 2

The rest of the week of driving training was just as good and fun as the first day, if not better.  Still can't tell you all about it, except that: I got to learn to drive stick shift!

I've only ever tried to learn to drive stick shift one time before, shortly after I got my license when I was sixteen.  My grandma tried to teach me out in the pastures on their farm on this ancient, broken-down truck (the gas pedal didn't even have the flat pedal-part attached to it anymore, it was just this metal stick/wire thing coming out of the floorboard, hard to find with your foot and even harder to put the right amount of pressure on).  Even experienced drivers had trouble driving that truck, so sixteen-year-old me couldn't even get it into first gear - it just stalled every time, and (did I mention the brakes were pretty much shot?) then we would start rolling backwards towards the pond, and my grandma would be yelling at me to get the truck started again and get it moving so we wouldn't fall into the pond...

So I came out of that experience thinking that driving stick shift was really, really hard.  And then I just never had another chance to try to learn until now.  It wasn't on the schedule for our driving training, but the instructors took pity on me when they found out I couldn't drive stick at all and gave me personalized instruction for an hour (along with one other student who also didn't know how to do it, which made me feel a little better).  And it turns out driving stick is super easy if it's with a car that actually works right.  (At least, it's super easy if you're on a closed course with no pressure from traffic and it doesn't really matter if you happen to crash into anything.  But I think I'd be fine driving in a normal setting as well.)

Anyway, so yay for driving training!  Now I am just wishing I got the opportunity to drive more often, but I guess I will get plenty of that in Nairobi - driving on the left side of the road, no less - that should be interesting.