The new year began and I was excited, because I was planning my trip to Abu Dhabi and of course I will manage my time so I could visit Dubai too and at the same time I was nervous, I haven’t pass the test yet, all night and almost all day I was preparing myself for the test. It was end of January I was in front of my computer ready to take the test, I only had one attempt and it will define if I was ready or not to go to my first school. That moment was everything I will prove that I was ready and all this 3 months were enough to be ready for my school. Right now, I don’t remember if the time I had to accomplish the test. But you need to know that I passed, my grade was ok at least more than 80/100.
After that moment I was anxious to celebrate with my family, and I was reading all the things that I could do the moment that I arrived. Since I passed with good grade my boss let me go at least with 3 days before starting the school. One day I went out with some coworkers from Coca, they were finished their first school. We went to the Corniche, that’s the name of Abu Dhabi’s beach. They spent almost 5 weeks at their school, so they told me all the things they did and gave me some useful advice.
Did you know that from October until late March it is winter? You will not see snow in the desert, it will more a chill weather, lot of wind and the temperature will drop until 10C at night more less. The day that I went to the beach I didn’t bring my bikini because at beginning I wasn’t sure what are the type of swimsuit you are allow to use. To me the UAE was a more conservative country, I thought that it will be like Saudi Arabia. However, in Abu Dhabi and Dubai the people is more open, you can use the bikini at the beach and you can use small dress, or shorts you are not allow you walk on the streets half naked or naked.
I knew that I had 10 wonderful weeks in Abu Dhabi and maybe on weekends I could go to Dubai but how I will spend my weekends there? Could I explore the city by myself or will I find people that will join with me to go out? How I will go to Dubai? Should I stay the weekend in Dubai? I had a lot of questions in my head. Still, I knew that I needed to sleep because next day I need to wake up early morning to go to my first class.
Could I say how much I love my new life?? I’m here in Abu Dhabi like 9 hours ahead, it is like I’m in the future hahaha. I’m here knowing a new culture, with people from different countries, too. All of us were in different classes, you know in my previous posts I explained that this company has segments. The classes started at 8am and finished at 6pm, the first day of class is on Sunday and the last day is on Thursday, so the weekend is Friday and Saturday. It was rare this new schedule, but it is how everything works in this side of the world.
Being here in my first O&G training makes me feel like I’m in Hogwarts, instead of having a big old castle, we have a big new building with 2 levels where it was located ours rooms, a big dinner, a big library, gym, different types of rooms: one where we could play Nintendo, or PS3, a music room, study rooms, and a big place where we could play billiard. In front of that big building where located the classrooms, different workshops: completions, testing, artificial lift, drilling. There were 2 big rigs, one for the drilling people, and the other was for completions or testing people. The people from Wireline had a special place for they truck. We had a big swimming pool we couldn’t use it because it was dedicated to a segment so it simulated that it was like the ocean and the building had a shape like an actual ship. I would say that it was a great place, if my university had that kind of infrastructure, I would love it.
Now I should talk about my classmates. I will start saying that it was the best classmates that I could have. My classmates had different nationalities, we were 8 Chinese, then where the latinos, 2 Venezuelan, 1 Mexican, 1 Brazilian and 1 Ecuadorian; 1 Canadian, 1 USA, 2 Russian, 1 Scotland and 1 Nigeran. I would say that it was a good combination. On our first weekend, we stayed in Abu Dhabi, we went to Hilton’s hotel, there was a restaurant in front of the beach where we could drink some beers, cocktails and smoke Shisha. But as you know the latinos like to dance, so we end it at the Sheraton and the disco name was Zenith. We had an amazing time, our group was the best. I just loved hanging out with all of them. That weekend was almost normal just hanging out at nights and at afternoons we went for shopping, or at the beach.
Our rule was the best: study hard on week days, so we could hang out all the weekend and the day before class we just study 2 or 3 hours, and be ready for the test. Imagine 10 weeks with great people, we were an incredible group; I didn’t want to go back to my country and work in Coca. Most of the students hate the first training and just want to go back to their locations, but for us were different, we wanted a big location that allow us to be together.
In other post, I will explain you in detail all the things we did in 10 weekends!!!! You have a sneak peek thanks to my Instagram account and Pinterest.
