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I was too exhausted to write last night about yesterday, so here I am on the 29th in Abu Dhabi, three days strong and loving it! Yesterday was a pretty intensive day as it was the first day of school for me, and it encompassed a lot of information.
I began the day by waking up at around 6:30 in the morning, which was a bit unfortunate as I was hoping to have been awake by 6:00am. I later discovered that I had incorrectly set the alarm on my clock, and that was why I wasn't up when I had wanted to be. I quickly got dressed, ate, and had a cup of Nescafe (serious I will write more on my epic adventure to find real coffee). Once everything was completed I made my way downstairs and began waiting for the bus.
While waiting for the bus that was when I discovered the only other new teacher that was living in my building, his name is Brent; he seems like a pretty nice guy. Once the bus had collected all the teachers it was time to go to orientation. Oh man I was so excited! My school is absolutely huge, as it has grades k-12 all in one building that is divided into two sections (high school and elementary school), all of which are divided into 6 other sections. We were taken to the, well the equivalent would be the gym in a North American school but I believe that they only use this room for assemblies but it's not called an auditorium that's in another place; I'll have to look up what the room is called later. While we were there we collected a bag of supplies, mingled a bit, and waited for the introduction for the elementary principal.
After we had received our initial introduction from the school, they took us up about 6 maybe 7 flights of steps in the elementary section of the school, to the room that is reserved specifically for student examination. The view from the room is absolutely amazing, as there are windows on all sides and it's so high up that you can see Abu Dhabi from all around you. The problem was that they had forgotten to put on the air conditioning in the room. I know I have described the heat in Abu Dhabi a little bit, but trust me when I say the humidity is so thick that you get wet the instant you go outside, not soaked or anything, but you do get damp. Now imagine a room full of windows, up seven flights of stairs, filled with about 30-40 people who just climbed 6-7 flights of stairs; that room was unbearably hot and this was to be a precursor for much of the day's activities.
The administration advised us to go to the canteen to get water for ourselves, collect our keys, have our coffee break and then we would meet back up in the room at a predetermined time for our meeting. This really involved a lot of waiting, and waiting in the heat for the water and the key. I should take a moment to describe what I was wearing as well, and hopefully in the near future I will be able to post a picture as well. First a tank-top, which had a long sleeve button up over top, with a long (to the floor) heavy navy blue skirt on, and to top it all off a black long sleeve dress jacket over top of my dress-shirt; needless to say I was melting. Once the waiting had ceased we went back up to the room, to collect our teacher handbooks and hear about the principals and mission statement of the school, all before getting a tour of the school.
The school is very large as it is a K-12 school with around 3,000 students. Though we had the tour, I really only was able to absorb some of the key details and not much else. I also found the location of my own art class which is very nice.
Once the day was done we all returned home to our apartments, but later that night the school was going to take us on a tour of Abu Dhabi. Though most of us were exhausted from being at the school all day, and listening to the orientation seminars; we were still all excited to have the chance to see the town. The bus picked us up at around 6:00pm, and took us to: the fish market, the vegetable market, down the Corniche, past the Abu Dhabi mall, then to the Marina Mall (which has an ice skating rink in it), we then went to the Palace (only 7 star hotel in the world), and finished with the Blue Mosque (beautiful!!).
When the tour was done the school took us out for a free Lebanese dinner and the food was fantastic! It was pretty much an all you can eat, and a sampling of whatever little dishes they brought out. I have a picture in my gallery to show some of the variety of foods that were available. The service was a lot of fun too. I also tried a mango juice, that literally tasted like syrup; as it was both very, very thick and sweet.
That was pretty much that day :D
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