Well, here we are at the first day of orientation. This year the Abu Dhabi Education Council's program is entitled: "Bedaya". I arrived at the Abu Dhabi Exhibition Center and looked for people I knew. This was pretty difficult at first because there were over three thousand people there. After making my way through some of the crowd, I found some of the members from the group that arrived in the U.A.E and the same time as I did. That made my day! As a group, we decided to sit at the top of the bleachers.

Our view from the nosebleed section

Our speaker

Since the speaker only spoke in Arabic, we all wore
 headsets and listened to a translator

One of the last words of the presentation

A young man walking around the event carrying a live falcon

I even got my own chance to hold the falcon!

 

After the presentation, we were treated to a wonderful buffet lunch!  It was very nice and one nice thing was that the ladies had their own buffet line. When I arrived into the luncheon area, I walked right up to the buffet and loaded up my plate. The men's buffet line was probably about twenty people deep!  Thank goodness, things went my way! 

 

All in all, it was a good day.