Oh, my poor car!

The light turns green…verrrmmmmmm…buh buh buuuuh. We jerk forward, jump 2 or 3 times, and stop. “It’s okay. Just start the car and we’ll try again.”

Verrrmmmmmmmmmm…buh buh buuuh. (Sigh…count to three.) “Okay, maybe a little less gas this time, and let off the clutch slowly.” Verrrmmmmm…buuuuh. (Oh, my poor car!)

The first driving lesson went VERY well! We woke up at 630am on Saturday morning, and because it is shabbot the religious can’t work – and driving a car is work. Luckily we aren’t that kind of religious so it was the perfect time for us to work on learning how to drive our new manual car. After three rounds of explanation on how to start the car, how to start moving forward and how to shift into second gear Paul repeated the directions back to Jen and they were off. Perfect start! You would have though Paul had been driving stick for years! Honestly.

We went one block, hit traffic and Jen drove back to a quiet street. The second start was a little rougher, but after just one stall we were moving! Paul gracefully stopped and started at the stoplight, turning left onto the four-lane road to Hertzalia (the suburbs to the north) and making it into 4th gear successfully. Paul was doing a great job…until the stop light. We sat through four reds, or more so, we didn’t make it through four reds. Verrmmmmm…buh buh buuuuh. I was starting to think this might be enough damage to the car for one day when someone knocked on the window…with a badge! Oh no!!! I don’t speak Hebrew well enough to talk my way out of a ticket! Is this illegal?!?!

“Roving patrol, is everything okay?.” (Roving patrol is like our own personal security, not Israeli. Their job is to protect us as opposed to society at large. We’ve had a few embarrassing encounters like this one where they think we need to be saved from some danger like us blowing our own fuses while cooking dinner.) Anyway, roving patrol was passing by and noticed us stopped in the middle of the road, sitting through 4 green lights and just wanted to make sure we weren’t having car problems. Nope…just learning how to drive. Thanks!

We made it through the light on the next try, drove through downtown Hertzalia, stopped at a red light on a hill with traffic, went around a circle and headed back home. The hour-long lesson was much more successful than expected and as a result we were out driving for about an hour! At this rate, Paul will be driving us to work very soon! US. Yes, US to work. Jen started work on Monday!!!

(We found out two days later that you have to have a special license to drive stick here! We are pretty sure that we are good on that though until we get the Isreali/international driver's licenses...we hope.)