Big news!

I recently reworked my CV for the very first time in a long time, as there was a position opening in my field which I was really keen on going for. I didn't expect even to get called for an interview, as I didn't fulfill all of the requirements, but I thought I'll give it a shot anyway.

I was so excited to get called, this is me on the way to the interview, and you can probably guess where this position was at..?

But I must have had something they liked, because they wanted me on their course!

So the Louvre Abu Dhabi have both a few in-house guides, and also a group of guides from a separate company working there. Now they wanted to further their pool of guides by educating a few external guides. There was eight of us accepted on this course.
For the week long course, we got to visit the all the galleries with the in-house guides, we were educated by the curators, watched movies and of course we were handed an immense amount of material to self-study.

Here is our group, from Russia, Turkey, France, UAE, Sweden, Estonia and Japan:

After the course itself, it was time to study and study, and practice and practice, over and over. To be honest, I didn't really do much else than study, read about art and history, and study some more, for the following weeks. One of the reasons the blog has been rather quiet during most of January and February...

As the narrative of the museum covers the history of humanity from 10,000 BCE until modern times, there is quite a lot of information to absorb, and the more you study, the more you realize how much more there is to know..!
Actually, you will never be DONE of course, learning is an ongoing process, but one that I am looking forward to. My interest in the arts have certainly been awoken, and I have already bought my weight in art books from the museum shop, ha ha!

One day I met up with my friend and colleague Aleks, and we practiced bits of the practical tour on each other:

So a few weeks back I did my practical exam, one morning before the museum opened. It was just me and the examiner, walking through the empty galleries.

We have also done two written exams, one essay type and one time-limited one with over 120 questions about the museum and the galleries. The last few weeks waiting for the results have been sooo long, but today the email came and - I passed!

I am now a licensed Louvre Abu Dhabi Tour Guide! Wii-hoo! Yay me!