Too cool for Driving School

Today was my driving test. Getting a licence has been a pretty crazy ordeal here overall. I called up to find out how to get a Florida licence and was told that we would have to simply go to one of the two major drivers licence centres, bring my UK driving licence, passport and I-94 card and they would give me a Florida licence for $5.50. I even called another time to confirm that it was really all that I needed to do. This was a couple of weeks ago. We all turned up at the office, which is about 35 mins drive from Mayo, and all our hopes were dashed! Instead of being so simple, our British licence only meant that we didn't have to do the 4 hours of drink and drugs awareness training (still a blessing, but not quite what we hoped!). We still had to do the whole written test, without having read the drivers handbook at all. We could only get 5 questions wrong and still pass it. I got 4 wrong, two of the others got 5 wrong, and one got 6 wrong so failed it! The written test qualified us for a learner's permit so we went ahead and booked the practical test, the slots being more than a week's wait away. Hege and I had the first appointments.

When we turned up for our practical test (another afternoon off work) our car managed to fail the safety test because we had one brake light out! So we had to rebook for today, a week later. That evening we discovered that the light had only fallen out of the socket and was jangling about in the light box!

The other two boys had their tests in the meantime. They told us that they failed because of hitting a cone when reversing out, and not stopping for long enough at the stop sign. This was a whole load of rubbish which we didn't find out until yesterday evening when they admitted that they had passed and were just having us on!

Today's test was really easy. The only difficult bit was pulling into a parking space in our big 7-seater minivan without hitting the cones. I had to try it a couple of times but it was still ok for the test's standards. So Krispy Kreme doughnuts all round to celebrate!