Well, that's the whole point...to learn manual. I had my drivers license in the US for years before I moved over here. So I know how to drive, I just needed to learn manual, and a few differences in laws. There are 2 types of drivers licenses here. If you learn stick shift, you can drive both stick and automatic. If you learn automatic, you can ONLY drive automatic. And most cars are stick here...automatics are becoming a bit more popular, but they're still few and far between. So I need to be able to drive a manual.
But the style of driving over here is much more aggressive than in the US. There are a LOT of roads that are really only made for one lane, but go both ways, so you have to be very careful to move over enough that someone else can get by, and to do that, you have to drive in the bike lane, so you have to be careful not to hit a cyclist, and you aren't supposed to slow down TOO much. You are only supposed to slow down or stop if you absolutely have to. Otherwise, you keep moving. My instructor told me to turn left, so I put on my blinker, I go to slow down to take the corner and he says no, don't hit the brake, but I was going too fast to take the corner and I had to shift while turning. Because he wouldn't let me brake, I was past the turn before I had slowed enough to take it....I was so confused. I so don't understand the reasoning behind not braking. If you can't slow down enough in time, why can't you brake?? But I wasn't supposed to brake to take the corner, I wasn't supposed to brake to get down to a lower speed limit, I wasn't supposed to brake at the intersection where I didn't have the right of way and had to wait for other cars. It doesn't make sense to me. It's so counter-intuitive. And to have to re-learn all of that while learning to shift and such is really frustrating. There have been a couple of times where I've pointed things out because he told me to hit the gas for example, but I'm already over the speed limit. Or he tells me to do something that there's a sign there that says you can't do that. And then he says "Well spotted." but I don't know if it was like a test to see if I'm paying attention, or if he didn't see it himself, in which case that's not good! I'm just really frustrated with it. DH says after 10 lessons it will be natural, but I came home last week all jittery and it took me an hour to stop shaking. I walked into the house on jelly legs and then I burst into tears telling my husband about the lesson. My lesson today was canceled because someone in the instructor's family is in the hospital with pneumonia and I was kind of relieved that I didn't have to deal with it this week. I know I need to do this, but once I get the license, I don't see myself driving beyond to work or choir, and occassionally if we go out to eat and DH wants to have a beer with dinner.