Can you please show me your ID?

They nice lady at the counter sweetly asks me, "Can you please show me your ID?" when I try to pay. The young girl checking ID's and putting X's on hands grunts, "ID?" Every random person who wants to either know how old you are or if you are in fact who you claim to be, asks for your ID. But they don't want just any card with a photo of you, they want your driver's license. And I always get funny looks when I whip out my learner's permit and hand it to them. It's like a flashing light suddenly appears over my head in neon with an arrow pointing down at me that reads "She STILL cannot legally drive."

Yes, I cannot drive. No, I do not think it is that big of a deal. I have friends and family that are awesome and get me where I need to go when I need to be there, and if they can't do it, I can generally walk there. When it was my 16th birthday I didn't wake up early and beg my mom to get up and take me to the DMV so that I could be the first person in line to take my driver's test like my mother did. In reality I'm pretty sure I slept in and then did something that didn't involve me taking a test. I was living in Europe then, and for those of you who may not know this, in Germany you have to be 18 years old to get your driver's license. Not only that but you have to go to driving school, which costs about 3,000 Euro, for roughly a year so that you can pass both the written test and the actual driving exam. And if you fail you have to do it all over again. And pay again. So as a 16 year old in Germany, I did not get my license on the economy because it was illegal. As an 18 year old in Germany I did not get my license because that's a lot of money and time; money that could be spent on college, and time that could be spent with family and friends. And since I couldn't practice legally in Germany, whenever I went back to the states for two weeks I wasn't exactly ready to take the driver's test. And I still am not so hot on the road. To practice driving here with a permit you have to have someone over 21 years old or a parent, and friends over 21 aren't just going to offer up their cars and afternoons to let me drive them around. Those random breaks that I get throughout the year where I am at home don't exactly suffice at making me completely road ready either.  So I still haven't taken the test.

So yes, when you ask me for my ID, I may show you my learner's permit. Please don't laugh.

Beautiful parking job right? These are from this past summer. I thought it was pretty good...

To defend myself, I think I could have done better if my mom hadn't been next to me freaking out that I was going to run over the curb and hurt the front end of her car in the process.

So this is what happened instead. Her front end was very, very, safe from getting scratched up - notice the lovely distance - but her back end was sticking out a bit.....

Shagging

So shagging here does not mean what I was first taught. When I was little I shagged balls at soccer practice, meaning that I would run and grab my soccer ball after I shot at the goal. Then as a captain sophomore year for the soccer team, I received a horrified look from a teammate when I reminded her to go shag her ball. She was British and enlightened me on what the English meaning of shagging means. Well then I came here to South Carolina and kept hearing people say how they go shagging on Thursday nights, and find out that shagging here is a dance! Not only is it a dance here, it is one of the three state dances of South Carolina (Fun Fact - SC is the only state to have three state dances). I finally embraced this part of being in South Carolina and went shagging, as in dancing. I learned:  how to shag and that I am terrible at it, how to dance the Charleston, and that shag music is unlike anything I have ever heard before.