After about a year of "going to", I've finally reached state of "doing": I'm taking car driving lessons. Today, I had my first driving lesson with Harm Hoek (though not from Harm himself, but Michiel, Harm just had a baby last week).

Brenda has here driving license since a while now and she has been able to borrow her mothers car during the last few weeks. For her, that meant a lot of driving practice, for me that meant lots of (helping) navigating and talk about cars and rules and traffic. So, I already had a pretty clear image of how a car is supposed be to operated, what the main traffic rules are and expected to start my driving lessons pretty well-prepared (I even started in Brenda's theory book already!).

Yet, this afternoon I was unexpectedly nervous. It didn't really lessen once I was in the car and I was still a little shaky when I got out. But, I managed just fine and actually drove about 15 kms from Enschede (I think, I was too busy driving to pay attention to the route) in my one-hour lesson (That's pretty slow on average... ;-p).

I think that, due to my preparation, I managed most things quite quickly. However, the amount of things that you need to do while driving did somewhat overwhelme me. Watch the road, watch the speed meter, look in that mirror, look to this road, work the gears, look over this shoulder, look in this mirror, look over that shoulder, watch the traffic, steer!

Anyway, next lesson is in two weeks (going camping next week), so I hope I'll not have forgotten everything by then... I'll be having a different instructor (Hugo) because Michiel will be on his vacation then.