Of fast teachers and fast students

Second part of the unit test and this one was the aural test. Before, we were asked when we would like to be tested. 20 minutes were scheduled for each of us and I had to arrive around 12 am, meaning that I was one of the last one about to be tested. Several class mates were sitting outside – most of them were already finished.

Well, I came in time for my test but before me, Masako was still being tested. While I sat on a stool next to the door, Kinoshita-sensei was walking down the aisle, greeting me, wishing me good luck and just barely avoided hitting the wall. In her speedy manner she’d done almost all things at once 🙂 And shortly afterwards my other teacher came as well which is, say, an odd coincidence. Still I waited and of course I became worried about the questions since Masako is much better in Japanese than I am – so if it takes so long for her, how long would it take for me to answer the questions.
Alas, it turned out that she was just weighing her answers instead of answering quickly. The room was a sparse one with a desk – me sitting on the one side and the teacher on the other. There were some difficulties with the digital recorder having no power left but that was quickly solved. The questions were quite simple ones like “When did you move to Japan?”, “Since being here, what has changed compared to your life in your home country?”, “Describe the way from your home to the school”. I answered most questions quickly but of course you were expected to use as much of the grammar taught in the semester as possible. I didn’t use it as extensively as I could have, but I was surprised when I was finished after twelve minutes. “Is that all?” I asked. My teacher just smiled.

In the floor there were already two others waiting for their turn to be tested and outside there was our guy from Sweden waiting. He did look extremely nervous. We chatted briefly and I told him not to worry.