The art of manual driving

A. will be leaving for Rumania tomorrow morning (remember my cunning plan from a couple of months ago? Well there you have it).
My sister is due in about a month and since she has had her other 3 kids at least 3 wks earlier, there's a fat chance this one will be born in a week or so.
Thing is, my brother-in-law is doing an international MBA and has to go to Dublin next week.
Great timing!
If he skips this part of the course he has to re-do it in 2 yrs and they will probably have other things on their mind by then.
Anywho.
A. is going over there to help. She is great with any kids of any age, my niece and nephews (or cousins, never get the hang of that one it seems) know her, they speak English rather well, A. speaks Dutch rather well, so No Problemo.

But, there's also a slim chance, A. has to drive their van one time or another.
Be it to bring my sister to hospital or take over coz my sis isn't feeling too great (remember any average 50 kilometer in Rumania takes you about 1 hr, coz of the state of the roads (bad) and the other traffic; horse-and-carriage or ancient Dasia (thus slow).

Now they have a manual and she was used to automatic. Was yeah, coz even before she left during the summerholiday I taught her how to drive in my Ford Focus. Small car, diesel and she was doing great.
But driving a van is a bit different.
Lot bigger and a lot heavier.

So Monday evening I threw the kids into their beds and we headed for The Spanish Polder.
A half-deserted industrial area where at night only hookers, cleaners and other ppl learning to drive pass by.
While there we swapped places and off she went.
She needed a little adjusting time and especially after we finally figured out we needed to pull down the handbreak, things went smoothly!
Really.
I did say that i though it would be a good idea to try it out in the real world too, coz that is what she will be doing in Rumania too.
Yesterday evening we were off again.

Now the thing with clutches and sticks is, once you get it into first gear, you'll probably keep driving. I mean you yank it over to second and third, but you have taken the first and most difficult bump to overcome: from nothing to first gear.
And the reason i am making this whole post at someone else's costs is that
1. it instantly brought me back to 20 odd yrs ago or so when i was learning how to drive (and hey, i'll admit it for all of my loyal 3 readers; it took me 4 times to pass my exam !!)
and
2. T. and A. will be such a good pair

See. I let A. drive home yesterday.
(Once again A; you were doing great ! I mean, i do understand i put you in some sort of a rotten situation just telling you you had to take left and then right and before you knew it you were on a major roundabout ;))
On some points, the engine dropped dead and she would nervously look in the rear mirror and restart it immediately and would drive off perfectly mumbling sorry sorry.

And this is exactly what my sister does!
She still nears a crossing (should i say intersection?) saying out loud: When nearing a crossing, Look Right and Left !!!!

I just imagine the 2 of them.
My sister holding her belly saying; Look Right, look Left
A. killing the car, saying sorry sorry (there's a chance my sister will be hanging out of the window to say this to the ppl behind them too, coz she used to 'sorry' all the time too) and then heading off.

I think i am going to instruct Job to record at least one of these situations and with my current blogging savvy-ness i'll audio blog that for you!

ps; what's this Flag thing doing in my blog?