Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

We bought a car today and I have had my first experience behind the wheel. I think the two things that I was most nervous about when thinking about living in Scotland were driving and pronouncing my students names. After almost four weeks of navigating the Kingdom of Fife (the county in which we live) on the public buses, it was time to get a vehicle. With some help from friends we picked out this nice little Nissan to carry us through the next ten months.Yesterday at lunch I was driven down to the car dealership to pick up our new wheels- which meant is was time to face one of my fears head on (sorry, poor choice of words there).

Although it was scary driving on the other side of the road and managing the roundabouts, I found that I had a lot of fun driving around and I'm ready to start taking the family to the further reaches of Scotland and England. I think the strangest part was not being on the other side of the road, but having the steering wheel on the opposite side of the car. Driving from that perspective was quite disorienting. Tomorrow we drive to Braemar for the Highland Games and I find myself looking forward to the drive as much as going to the games. Rumor has it that some royalty (Royalty?) will be in attendance, possibly the queen.

As far as my other fear- pronouncing students names. It may seem silly, but you try pronouncing Caernach correctly. I'll give you the correct phonetic pronunciation in the next post!