flying with someone new

I flew with a new instructor yesterday (mine is out of town) and it was an interesting experience. He is a bit older and thus had a couple of different perspectives on a few things which I found interesting and informative. One thing was that I didn't was that you do not have to use an aviation beacon with your ADF receiver. We did a few of the usual things (which I did 'ok' with I think) and my landing was decent. I wanted to see whether or not I would be nervous with someone else in the right seat (such as an FAA pilot examiner) and I don't think it bothered me at all. The weather was almost rainy but improved right before we took off. I was hoping to fly in some rain because I haven't done that yet but no such luck. This was also the first time that we had to burn the carbon off of the plugs which I had heard about but had never seen done.