So, three days ago i've left that forsaken country to go to Abu Dhabi for ten weeks of school. It was amazing. That feeling of leaving. Or more, that feeling of getting back to somewhere. I mean, i just crossed the bridge to Bahrain in a cab. And suddenly, there is life again. Women driving cars (it's a sad thing you have to mention that as something special..). I was overwhelmed by the sudden realization of what i didn't have at all in the last three months - i just saw a poster next to the highway in Bahrain. For an exhibition. Wow! There is NO SUCH THING AT ALL in that forsaken country. So nice, just a poster for an exposition. Museums! And there were more posters, one for theater, one for some dancing performance. We also passed a shopping centre. Guess what, it was a shopping centre with a cinema, how special! No such thing in sick-o country.
Anyways. Have you ever had jet lag without a flight? I came back from the rig two days before i left. And had a total jet lag. Because i had done the night shift there, 18-6h, and it was kinda hard to adapt to the 'normal' sleep at night, work during the day routine. My flight to Abu Dhabi was only 45 minutes, so i guess that was prophylactic jet lag just in case :-) Uh, yes, 45 minutes. When i got to the airport i looked at the display screen. All in Arabic except for the times. And only for the time of my flight there were two times. It took'em five minutes to switch the screen to English. Of course my flight was the only one that got delayed - three and a half hours delay for a 45 minutes flight, haha. But i got here, safe and sound.
Nice airport here in Abu Dhabi. (Hello to all my architecture friends..) Customs was a bit strange. The guy at the counter for non-GCC-countries was actually the first person who asked me for my name AFTER looking at my passport. I can only assume that he wanted to check if that passport was mine. I guess that's why they put a picture in it... He also didn't really speak English, so no idea how he got to sit in the international counter. After intensly studying the cover of my passport for five minutes he looked at me and said "Nemsa?" which is Arabic for Austria so i just replied "Yes, i am from Austria" which caused him to ask his colleague after which they both asked me "Nemsa?"... That guy also couldn't operate his computer and had his colleague enter whatever information about me it was that he had to enter there... well, they've let me through.
So, where am i now? Right now i'm sitting in a bus somewhere between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. We stay in a hotel near the highway connecting those two cities. The hotel is pretty big. Haven't had much time to explore it yet. I think it was a palace of some sort before they've turned it into a hotel. All rooms seem bigger than you would expect. It's kinda creepy going to my room since i have to walk through a long hallway, there is this strange elevator music coming from somewhere and there seems to be nobody except me on the whole floor. Coming from the lobby my room is in the underground level. Which actually means that my window/glass door opens directly to the beach. Hehe. Some pictures of the hotel will follow.
Only been here three days, but speaking about daily routines: the bus leaves from the hotel at 6:45, taking an hour to get through the brandnew school building. It will only be officially opened in the middle of march. There were two or three shorter classes before us but we are the first class of this ten weeks course. Nice. Soon there will be up to fourty classes at the same time so you can imagine it's big. Everything's still new up to the price tags on the seats. Pretty neat. We got about ten hours of classes each day and free time on the weekend which is friday and saturday around here - i didn't have a weekend or free day since November, remember? And of course there are a couple of tests each week, one on every sunday morning to keep us busy on the weekend :-)
So, in short: life is good again.
Cheers
CGA
No comments:
Post a Comment