… here I come, brand new driver’s license in hand — or rather, in mail! Right now all I have is my temporary paper license, and theoretically the shiny plastic one will arrive in my mailbox in the next three weeks. We shall see. In any case, the portly and somewhat gruff policeman who passed me (somewhat against his better judgement, I think) stamped, signed, and sealed my fate about an hour ago.

The whole thing only took about 10 minutes. It went like this:

1) I back out of my parking space nicely (with a little help from my tester) and drive slowly down a couple of streets, making full and complete stops at all stop-signs. I impress my tester so much in the first 30 seconds of the drive that he asks how much experience I’ve had, and when I say three and a half months he tells me I drive like I’ve been doing it for ten years. (Since I’m me, and completely incapable of accepting praise without over-analysis, at this point I’m obviously thinking “Oh, great. Now when I mess up you’ll be disappointed in me.”)

2) He asks me to parallel park and I manage to do it without too much drama (and with a little more help from him). When I am done, I put the car into park and pull up the brake. “You’re parked on a hill,” he says. “What else should you do?” I have no idea what he is talking about, so I do the only thing I can think of — I straighten the wheel out some.

Talking to Ross later, I realise that this action (undertaken purely by fluke) saved my butt. When you’re parked on a hill, you’re apparently supposed to angle the wheels towards the curb, so that if for some reason your brakes fail you’ll roll into the curb instead of into the car behind you or down the hill. Thank goodness for whatever made me futz with the wheel, because it must have convinced him I knew what he meant.)

3) I nearly bang into the bumper of the car in front of me when I’m pulling out — gah! He pulls up the hand-brake and saves me. At this point I am afraid I will fail.

4) I make a pretty good 3 point turn. Phew!

5) I back up (sort of) straight down the street. I feel very shaky, but I guess I do an ok job.

6) He tells me to drive back to the testing place and stamps me passing! I am convinced he is failing me until I see him write “PASS” on the paper. I want to kiss his feet, but he is a big burly policeman so I refrain.

7) I thank him for my license and his advice, and he tells Ross to “Watch her!” when he gets out of the car. Heh.

8) I fail completely to back up into the right side of the street and have to leave the lot from the opposite lane. The policeman gives me a look and says “That’s why you have to back up onto the right side!” But it’s TOO LATE. I ALREADY HAVE MY LICENSE.

I HAVE MY LICENSE.

I AM ALLOWED TO DRIVE BY MYSELF.

I WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO USE MY PASSPORT AS ID! (Although now that I’m teaching full time I usually dress sharp enough that no one cards me anymore. Maybe I’ve developed that “adult” look.)

There is a lot of other news from The Great Adventure, both good and bad, but the only thing I want to share is this:

My girls (four groups out of five, anyway), put on 2 minute presentations of Greek myths this afternoon, with an audience and everything (I invited another girls’ class to come and watch). They were great. I mean, the acting was pretty awful, and the scripts were kind of minimal, but only two people cried, only one group refused to perform (I bet they regretted it, because the audience was incredibly supportive and whooped everyone loudly), and the girl who played Hades had the Best. Darth Vader voice. Ever.