Driving to Delphi

It took us five hours to get to Delphi--two and a half hours longer than advertised. If you're asking why, you've clearly never been driving in Greece.

The good news is that we survived this ordeal and, surprisingly, so did our marriage. And now that it's over, we can look back and laugh.

Several factors contributed to the long drive.

1. In Europe, they don't fill the rental car gas tanks... you have to do that. Our pit stop for petrol turned into a forty-minute odyssey--first trying to find the gas station, then trying to get back on the freeway after wards.
2. It was hard to match the map to actual driving conditions; some towns (and many roads) didn't appear on the map at all. Others were spelled multiple ways in English--on the map, on various road signs, and it made us nervous. (Lavidia, Livadia, Leveida... same town? You be the judge!) This made for several painful detours and mis-turns.
   
3. Our fear of getting lost had us driving through rather than around several towns.

Things got better once we (a) obtained huge bottles of water and (b) figured out how to turn on the air-conditioning. Still, Mike had to contend with a pretty crazy driving culture. Everyone in Greece goes fast, nobody uses turn signals, and the painted lines for lanes seem to be negotiable guidelines more than anything else. People love to pass slow (re: speed limit abiding) vehicles. It doesn't seem to matter whether the road is curved or straight, in the flat lands or the mountains. Cars were pulling all kinds of death-defying stunts.

Mike did what he could to assimilate, but our little tin can of a car was not made for aggressive driving. (Aggressive parking? Definitely.) The engine struggled every time we passed someone, turned a sharp corner, or went uphill. I could hear it humming frantically even as Mike would chant, "you can do it! You can do it!"

One thing's for sure: we will never forget our adventures in that orange Fiat Panda.

Sweet Teaching Victory!

We interrupt the (probably) never-to-be finished posts about Europe in order to bring you a real-time life update: I passed my National Boards!

Here is a picture of me, triumphantly holding up the computer notice that I passed:

What does this mean, exactly? On an intrinsic level, there's validation for what I do. On a practical level, there's a slight pay hike. More importantly, it means my certification is valid for 10 years, so I've got a decade off from worrying about that particular maze of bureaucratic red tape. No longer will I be jumping through hoops to keep my job. No longer will I have to worry that, if I take a year or two off for kiddos, I'll be ineligible to teach when I'm ready to come back.

Never you fear... I'll get plenty of exercise jumping through other kinds of hoops. This is, after all, public education we're talking about. :)