Swedish School in the desert

Swedish School had organized a picnic today, in the desert. I was pretty excited about this since many people seem to go to the desert nearly every weekend, and I was keen to finally experience it.
It was quite a big group of us, eleven families, that drove in a convoy to our selected spot, about 30 minutes from Abu Dhabi.

After parking we had to carry all our things over a hill, to get to our chosen spot:

Swedish School Abu Dhabi - in the desert!

Oh yeah, our friend Will from Brunei is here for the weekend - he got to come along too!

My teacher colleague Liselotte, making herself comfortable:

Kids were having a ball climbing up the sand dunes, and rolling down them; chasing each other, playing in the sand and running around. We had brought some disposable BBQs to cook our food:

We sure were desert picnic virgins, but luckily we could pick up a lot of good tips on what to bring next time: lanterns for when it gets dark, an army knife to cut the hot dog bread, BBQ thongs, big packet of wet wipes for all the sand, a huge sand blanket, desert pillows etc etc... Next time we will be "glamping" like pros!

A "dune basher" turned up to everybody's amusement, until he got a little bit too close and we had to ask him to maybe go in another direction... We didn't want to risk any of the children getting run over!

 Enjoying the food:

When the sun set, we lit a campfire and all the kids got busy with the marshmallows. It sure was the highlight for all the children, so cosy!

It was amazing how fast it got cold after the sun had set. We did have jackets and sweaters with us, but everybody ended up packing up and going back home anyway by then.

Next time I want to bring a lot of lanterns and blankets and stay and enjoy the campfire for a while into the night!