Britney rules the world

Every day we have to drive to the school a bunch of times. (There and back twice. So not that many, really.) I am getting really good at the route, and really good at not panicking when motorbikes head straight for me and veer off at the last possible second. I am getting better at avoiding the gigantic potholes, although I wouldn't classify myself as "really good" yet.

Driving feels like a video game. You have to pay really close attention and random things pop out at you from all directions. A huge bird, a hawk of some kind I believe, missed us by 2 feet a couple of days ago. One time I had to come to a full stop to wait for a car that was coming directly towards us, but backwards. Like in the Sherman Alexie story.

Some of the potholes are the size that I can drive over, with one wheel on each side. Those are pretty easy to deal with, except sometimes they happen more than one in a row, and then you have to swerve around to miss them both. But the really hard ones are the ones that are too wide to fit under the car; then you have to either go through it, slowing down to a crawl and gritting your teeth (the slowing down part is only if you see it ahead of time though. Ahem.) OR you have to go all the way around it, which means moving into the left part of the road (oncoming traffic, as much as there are lanes) or sort of creep by on the curb side.

I'm trying to just memorize where all the hugest potholes are, but they seem to change every day. That is probably my imagination.

The best part of the drive is a huge wall where someone has painted a mural. The mural is a white woman and the words "Britney Spears". The woman looks nothing like Britney Spears, either now or in her glory days, and the wall is just in the middle of a bunch of houses and some kind of furniture store. It's pretty awesome.



Note to my parents and grandparents, and Emily's parents: I'm not really exaggerating about the driving, but I really am fairly good at it. And neither I nor anyone else goes that fast. So don't worry inordinately.