Welcome to England. Here we drive on the LEFT.

Hello from England!

I am finally back...no more Mallorca for me! (Well maybe until next summer, if I decide to go back). Actually, in typical me fashion, I am already planning my next summer. And the next one is five months long..!

(Just a quick clarification before I proceed, I changed my name on facebook. Not to be cool or anything, just because it will be easier next year when I'm teaching if people (ie potential students) can't find me so easily on facebook if they try. You just never know in this day and age, so it's best to err on the side of caution).

Anyway, having been back a week now, I have to say it has been surprisingly fun rather than depressingly cold, rainy and boring as I anticipated. The weather has been okay (for England), no rain as of yet. And I have been reunited with both my sisters and my family for the first time properly since April.

The only thing(s) that have caused me great stress this week are:

1. Driving
2. Paperwork, Finance and Accomodation for Paris.

It has only just sunk in properly for me exactly how unprepared for the end of September I am. I have officially booked my ticket on the Eurostar for the 25^th September, London St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord. Fingers crossed I'll arrive and magically have somewhere to live by then.

The second issue is of course, driving. I have booked my test and now I am panicking slightly. There are two types of people in the world, those who have passed their tests first time and give you positive feedback and people who did NOT pass first time and are sceptical. It's hard to know which ones to believe. I don't want to go into my test with the frame of mind that I'M GOING TO FAIL but equally I don't want to go in cocky and assured that I'll whizz through it no problem.

I have been out twice this week in our old battered Ford Focus (with both of each parents) and to tell the truth, there have been some hair-raising moments. Bearing in mind that it has been 2 months since I've been driving and in those two months I have been accustomed to 'driving on the right', European style.

When approaching a roundabout, my father said “I want you to turn right at this roundabout”. Now, I know that means, “choose the exit on the roundabout which leads right from where you are now” but for some bizarre and unknown-to-anyone-including-myself reason, I decided that I would ACTUALLY TURN RIGHT at the roundabout.

As soon as I had started to emerge and turn right my father began yelling and screaming “WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS IS A ROUNDABOUT!”

And, lo and behold, I realised with a horrifying jolt in my stomach that it was. There was a bus approaching onto the roundabout going in the opposite direction to me. For a split second I was incapable of doing anything except for sit in sheer panic and watch the situation unfold before my eyes before coming to my senses very quickly and turning sharp, sharp sharp to the LEFT to follow the roundabout around English-style. All I can say is that, fortunately I didn't stall, which would have made the situation a lot worse.

But I have to say, if that had been a driving test, I somehow don't think I would have passed.

It's not an abnormal thing to do when you've been used to right-lane drivers for an extended period of time. In fact, in a car with my father driving through France this Easter in a rented car, there was a terrifying moment when he emerged from a junction and stayed ON THE LEFT whilst approaching a hairpin bend into a tunnel until I reminded him “WE'RE IN EUROPE!” and he suddenly swerved JUST IN TIME onto the right before a driver came whizzing through the tunnel “in our lane”.

However, it is nonetheless one of the craziest and most dangerous situations you could get yourself into, driving onto a roundabout the WRONG WAY. Imagine if it was busier (I was driving at night). I don't like to imagine it actually. I would have written the car off for sure.

So, driving needs some polishing up. I have to say, it's not that I can't drive well. I just need to practise everything methodically and get used to English roads before I take my test. In Mallorca, drivers were crazy and not exactly safe on roads. The same in Nice, when I was there. People had a much more 'laid back' attitude in Nice (to driving). Everything from parallel parking in impossibly small spaces to driving by centimetres from parked cars was 'acceptable' in Nice. I guess you have to be one of those really experienced drivers in order to get away with this – but the bottom line is you can't drive this way in England and 'get away with it'. You will get caught. And made to pay.

So, driving is just one of those things I have to try and do without losing my head and just get on with it while I have the chance. Cause next year, I won't. I think I'm having the same frustrations in a car that I was having this summer with language. Speaking Spanish was frustrating for me because the majority of people assumed, before I had time to prove myself, that I barely knew Spanish. When in reality, I knew a lot more than they realised. There was one incident, in the last week of my stay at a house party, which makes me so mad I still get angry thinking about it.

We were surrounded by lots of Mallorcans who all spoke English to some degree, some more than others. One of the guys who spoke English to a lesser degree (but assured me had spend a year 'studying' in Florida) had been talking to me in English all night. I didn't mind, but then I said to him “Podemos hablar español” because MATE we are in Spain (not England, not Florida) and I am supposed to be practising.

Well of course he didn't really care or bother changing to Spanish; I guess he just assumed that I didn't know enough and that he knew more English. (In reality, he didn't).

Anyway it didn't bother me until later on that night when we were outside by the pool and I overheard him behind me chatting to my friend (who speaks amazing Spanish and is fluent). He was talking about me, obviously assuming I couldn't understand.

(This was all in Spanish. And yes, I did understand every word).

“But your Spanish is amazing! You're really, really good. Your friend there, she doesn't speak much at all, does she, and she hardly understands does she?”

I gave him a very withering stare at this point, but he didn't register because he didn't know I was listening/comprehending. My friend proceeded to explain that I did understand but didn't know as much as her because I'd only been learning 2 years.

He then looked at me, a little bit worried, then back at her and then said “But – that means we can't talk about her? We can't have a private conversation because she understands everything we're saying?”

I don't often feel like punching people (and if I had tried, he was a lot bigger than me and probably could've knocked me out) but I was very tempted to go up and give him a very sharp and hard slap across the face. What an idiot anyway, I consoled myself with, not before giving him another evil look.

The thing is, I've written about this before: people should not be THAT condescending when it comes to language learning. He may have had a point that my Spanish isn't great. But it's never OK to say that about someone when they're learning a language. And I would never say that about someone learning English.

It's kind similar with driving (OK, maybe not completely the same). I know I'm a relatively inexperienced driver, but when I go out on the roads with instructors/parents/anyone and I make a small error (or big error) it's a complete knock to my system. It then leads people to believe that I'm completely unsafe on the roads, that I can't think for myself and that I'm going to crash the car.

Now I know exactly why people might think this (learner drivers are the most risky on roads of course). And I understand that people SHOULD think this because sometimes I do risky things like with the roundabout. But 95% of the time, I don't! I am a pretty safe driver. I keep to speed limits and I generally do what I've learnt about checking mirrors, stopping distances, waiting for traffic etc. But of course, it's the 5% which makes all the difference. The 5% of the time when I'm not concentrating and I end up doing something stupid is what counts against me. And then it's like a shock to my system the way someone insulting me about language is a shock to my system.

I guess we can't be perfect in anything. And maybe there's not much point in worrying about the 5% of the time I get something wrong on the roads or when I'm trying to speak in a foreign language – the best thing is to forget it, keep going and try again.

a) I did reverse around the corner perfectly last night after three goes (and in the dark).

b) And I DID learn a lot of Spanish this summer (compared to what I knew two years ago – zilch – it's saying something that I can hold a conversation for up to an hour and a half about life, careers, crime and poverty and Mexican culture. I talked to the host mum a lot about this).

Guess it just a matter of 'practise makes perfect'.

Stressful things aside, there have been some good moments this week. I walked into our garden the day I got back only to discover we have a TRAMPOLINE!

It's such a shame that my family decided to get this when I am 21 and not 12. I'm just imagining the amazing sleepovers I could have had with my girlfriends if we'd had this trampoline then.

Anna and I went to Lyme Park (which is one of my favourite places in England) the day I arrived home from Spain. Unfortunately we didn't get any photos (it was nice, sunny weather) but this is what it is.

Actually, Lyme Park is where the BBC filmed the 1995 version of 'Pride & Prejudice' - Stockport's greatest claim to fame! Below is a still from the film, Darcy and Lizzie walking through these grounds. We've climbed up these steps numerous times! (You can see the house in the background).

So as you can see, in spite of all my moaning about it and insisting that Mallorca is better, England is a very beautiful country. There's so much green here - even OUR garden is looking good. Could be my parents, having taken up gardening, having a mid-life crisis. 

Anyway, now I'm off to 'sort my life out' (lots of paperwork still awaits me, groooan).

Laters!