Despite the advice of experienced teachers, I took my students on a field trip on Thursday. One of the advantages of teaching at the one of the main schools in the capital city of a country that likes to throw money around is that we get invited to a lot of things. With the F1 coming to Abu Dhabi, there were presentations over the past few days.
It seem like only the new teachers signed up their classes to go which was the first hint that something was up. Reports from the teachers who took their classes on Wednesday was the second. Because it was a big deal to reserve the space and have the buses come, I couldn't really cancel. I had heard that the level of English used was above the students' heads and that there weren't enough videos with explosions and violence in them.
As we were on a bus that decided to leave the college parking lot out the narrow entrance with cars coming towards us, I made a point of telling the students that the way they behaved reflected on the school and that they were "ambassadors for the school."
We arrived just in time for the "Men's registration and had to wait a few minutes while the organizers of the event registered the ladies and sat them on the other side of the auditorium. I sat down and examined the swag bag that everyone got which included a pretty high quality cap.
The presentation began with the MC, a well-known local sports commentator, chatting to the students in Arabic. There were basically people from the business side coming out to chat with us including the CEO of the Abu Dhabi Motorsports Management, and a few representatives from Renault. They showed a few good clips from the Dubai Road Show and of an F1 car on snow to keep the students interested. They even had Adam Khan, an F1 driver there for some Q&A.
Overall, I thought that the students were pretty well behaved and the presentation was really worthwhile. While I'm not a fan of F1, I think it's pretty exciting that it's coming to the city I live in. I'm looking forward to all the exciting events right outside my apartment!
Any bets on a future post complaining about the noise level of the exciting F1 cars right outside his apartment. Curious to know how loud they are. The Indy cars in Vancouver were super loud and I lived kilometers away from the track.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that there will be and F1 cars, but they're showing movies and having free concerts with the likes of Soul II Soul and DJ Charl Chaka. To be honest, the kids might enjoy some of the movies like "Cars" and "Herbie: Fully Loaded with Lindsey Lohan"
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