Thursday 12 October 2017

WorldSkills Abu Dhabi

There is a huge event taking place in Abu Dhabi this week and next, the 44th WorldSkills Competition. With more than 1300 competitors and 10,000 international guests in town, Abu Dhabi is b-u-s-y.
The WorldSkills Competition occurs every two years, and it is the largest vocational education and skills excellence event in the world. 77 countries and regions are represented, and they have sent the best of the best to compete in 51 different skills, such as f.e bricklaying, beauty therapy, bakery and aircraft maintenance.

Us tour guides have been booked up to work all through the event, helping out with arrival and departure transfers, manning information desks in each hotel, sightseeing trips and special events. I worked on Tuesday, together with a big team of guides, taking about 1800 of the experts out to a purpose built Desert Camp for an afternoon excursion.



We picked the guests up at the ADNEC (Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Center), filled bus after bus and took off. In my bus I had experts from Finland, Latvia, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, France, Sweden, Norway, Canada and Bahrain. I loved it, so international!

After we had arrived to the camp and offloaded the guests to go have some fun, I helped out with the handing out of jasmine flower wreaths. It smelled super nice on the red entrance carpet!




Emirati hospitality: Arabic coffee was served upon arriving, and the incense burner was brought to each and every guest to make them smell nice. I really love this photo below that I took:


The set up of the camp was huge, obviously with so many guests! It was really fantastic, they could ride a camel, try dune bashing in some 4x4 cars, get henna decorations, Arabic calligraphy, weaving, try traditional clothing, hold falcons and much much more. 


Us Tour Guides had our dinner in the dunes, admiring the sunset. It is really something else out in the desert!


The guests were also treated to traditional dancing and music:


I felt really proud to be part of this event and I had so much fun together with both the other guides and the guests! Great evening!

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