After a rather aborted night of four hours at most, dreaming about having to do exams, the alarm goes off and I blink into the darkness of what is usually my bedtime.
Around me the dogs look at me with mystified expressions, their eyes huge and owlish as I lay there, staring at the dark ceiling while I’m trying to think why the heck the alarm is going off now. Due to the dreams I would have sworn that I was already working on the exam, but now I slowly begin to realize that the actual chore won’t be until another two and a half hours.
Groaning, I get out of bed, the dogs scrambling to get ahead of me, I hurry towards the door and throw it open before they are able to press close. I’ve got exactly forty-five minutes to get ready, and though this is really ample time, I feel a little tense as I get dressed, gather my things and then head down the mountain in the dark to let the dogs into the courtyard.
Big mistake…at least the dressing part…since the dogs jump up against me the moment I pass through the door and end up with several paw prints on the jeans and sweater that tops it. Drat, I’ll have to change clothes before departure.
The younger sibs are there, having already prepared the coffee, which I pour liberally down my throat as I chew on a peanut butter and honey sandwich and keep myself distracted with the siblings’ talk and jokes.
Forty-four minutes after waking, I’m redressed in clean clothes, have taken my painkillers and am sitting in the truck as we head towards the city. Talk between big brother and our driver of the morning is about a variety of subjects, including the upcoming exam, and seeing as traffic is light we arrive at our destination half an hour early.
We go over our books one last time and then climb from the car to join the gathering crowd in the back of the large building that is still locked against anyone who isn’t an employee. Around us about eighty people are clustered in small groups and as almost an hour passes, the knee is definitely demonstrating some disagreement.
At last someone appears in the doorway of the building and the gate is opened to let us and the crowds enter onto a fenced in courtyard. A woman starts calling out names from a stack of papers she’s holding. Name after name is called, after the fifteenth or so bringing brother forth so he can head inside to follow the steady stream of today’s exam takers.
I’m somewhere around number fifty, and when the woman finally calls my name, I wince at the deformed pronunciation. I take my form, give her a friendly smile and then head to two flights of concrete stairs up to the aula on the second floor. A line has formed there, human traffic slowing down due to the check of identity before we are led inside where we’re to take one of approximately a hundred and twenty table and chair combos.
I see big brother way ahead of me in front, and settle in my seat in the middle while arranging my vest on the chair and placing my bag at my feet.
The rest of the exam takers file in around me, slowly filling each and every seat until we’re piled inside the large space like sardines in a can.
Finally the last one arrives and settles, bringing the two supervisors to the front to mess with the microphones for a bit. Neither appears to work, so with a suffering sigh one of the women clears her throat and starts to address us in rapid Spanish, explaining the rules, or so I manage to decipher by picking up the few words I recognize.
Next they start to disperse our tests, placing them on the table before us with the instruction of covering the three cellophane covered lists under our answer form while they move down the isles, repeating it over and over again.
There are quite a few English folks today, and time after time the women pass me without handing me my question lists. It isn’t until one of the supervisors stands in the front of the tables once more and calls out if everyone has what they need when she finally notices my raised hand and comes hurrying over to hand it to me. I’d swear I was invisible. Hah.
So, another long list of instructions follow, most of it repeats of what our teacher already explained until at last we are instructed to sign our test and check the personal information on it. Then we need to fill in the codes of our individual tests and then wait for the “start” sign that is given on ten thirty, exactly.
I take a deep breath, relax all the tense muscles in my body and start reading. First one’s easy, followed by several doubtful cases, which I skip in favor of answering those I’m certain of so I can take my time with the others.
I’m horrified at finding more than a few questions that A. have nothing to do with the lesson material. B. have never before been mentioned. C. that are put down in such a confusing fashion that I have to read them three times to unravel the meaning behind them. And D. (which is the cincher) six questions about motorcycles. Huh?
As luck will have it, I also get exactly those questions which we’d discussed at school, and which the teacher wasn’t at all sure about. Drat.
I do the best I can going over everything twice more to see if I’ve marked every box and three minutes before my half hour is up I shrug and get up to hand in my test. I can’t think of what to do differently, so lingering is useless.
Heading on out to wait for big brother, I light a cigarette and shake my head as the questions + answers keep whirling through my mind, already starting to doubt pretty much all the answers I gave. What are the chances of getting nervous after a test, huh? Aaargh.
Big brother appears, his usual poker face in place as we head to the car where our driver is patiently reading a book, and we start writing down the questions and answers that we remember so we can discuss them with our teacher later on.
It takes well up to an hour, leaving with a complete blank of five of thirty questions that I can’t think of for the life of me. While going over the questions we have already found out at least one error and three maybes, which is a rather depressing thought. By this time our driver turns the key in the ignition and…nothing. Gawd. While we were busy working out all the material, none of us considered that the CD playing was rapidly draining the battery, leaving us stranded on the outskirts of the city.
We end up calling for road services, which doesn’t arrive until after noon and has us on our way in three minutes. Very frustrating! There is some confusion on our way out of the mazes of the city, but in the end we manage to find our way back to the motorway and the town where our school is located.
We spent about half an hour with our teacher, telling her of the questions, answers and the way they were formulated, which has her roll her eyes every so often before she informs us that the results should be available around noon tomorrow. With that, and the afternoon siesta, which is a usual practice around here that closes all stores and offices between one and five in the afternoon, we start on our way home.
It is during that drive that I get the disturbing thought that I might have done something wrong on my answer sheet after all. I can’t, for the life of me, remember if I wrote down individual four digit codes for every ten questions, which was something that big brother had to do. So I start to worry, did I read every individual number or did I presume them to match the way they do at school? I can’t remember, and this thought continues to swirl through my head for the remainder of the day.
Once at home, after greeting the dogs and quickly taking care of the laundry chore, I settle down with my computer to write out all the notes I made in the car so I can check them for details once more. In the end there are two definite mistakes and two maybes, so if one of the maybes turns out to be correct I will have passed…presuming that I didn’t make that dreaded four digit code mistake, which would make at least fifteen questions faulty. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The way I figure I might as well get the mental berating over and done with, just in case, hah.
Afterwards, with everyone sleeping the day I away, I spend a few hours online, just surfing to relax, and around dusk, when the younger sibs have reappeared, I shut down the computer–before I nod off to sleep right in my chair. Some exercise is called for, I decide, and change clothes to carefully start on the familiar routines in the company of mom.
I manage more than the other day, though kicking is still out of the question–or so I realize after a couple of tryouts. As a matter of fact the three kicks I did were downright excruciating, leaving me feeling sore and tense by the time I’m done (still, I feel much better than before, now that thoughts of the exams have been pushed to the back of my mind) and wash up before hobbling to the kitchen to start on dinner.
What with the sibs only having had four hours of sleep too, no one feels up to cooking, and since I have a serious hankering for actual nourishment, rather than some sort of snack, I decide to do it myself.
Fried rice and veggies with satay will do for the day, especially since the rice and veggie mix is already done in a sack that’s stored in the freezer, needing only the satay to be made in which the dish can be prepared.
By the time I’m done, my knee is throbbing like mad, and with my regular bag of frozen peas in one hand and my meal in the other, I settle at the table to let the cold do its thing on the painful joint.
Middle sister thankfully offers to get my a couple of painkillers from my room, along with the supportive bandage which I wrap around the swollen mess after the cold treatment has done its work, leaving me at least remotely comfortable.
Yadzia is distinctly uncomfortable, however, his back obviously paining him, setting off an entirely different kind of depression since I know that I can’t be selfish in letting him suffer when the quality of his life is so obviously going down. Though he still wags his tail when I sit down beside him for a proper petting, his entire body is tense, and occasional crying makes him squirm. I don’t think I can postpone the inevitable much longer for the poor Labrador, and that thought almost makes me cry.
The rest of the evening is spent watching a couple of movies that seem to pass in slow motion for me, now that energy levels are waning. Bedtime is starting to look more tempting by the hour, and around midnight I’ve passed the eighteen-hour mark of waking time.
With much relief I take the dogs up the mountain and feed them–giving Yadzia his tuna and kibble mix, which he eats enthusiastically-before I drag my way through the evening rituals and set up the computer to write down today’s events.
Tomorrow will show if today’s hassles were worth it, I guess. But in all honesty, I’m not looking forward to it.
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