The second week of December is when the holiday season arrives in full force at our office. It starts with a charity Christmas market in the lobby of our building and is then followed by an office-wide Christmas cocktail and individual Christmas lunches arranged by the different departments, including the department that I head.
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Alicante is nicely decorated, here on Avenida Alfonso el Sabio:
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Plaza Luceros:
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Chestnut vendor, waiting for customers:
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The Christmas market at the office lasts 3 days, with different charities taking turns. I bought some fairtrade chocolate and some Peruvian coffee from this stand:
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The Caritas people were selling handicrafts made by Palestinian women in the occupied territories:
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These people were selling stuff from Africa:
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A different photo from the office. This is my former office where I worked until the reorganisation in July 2024, after which I moved to an adjacent building. My old office was empty for more than a year, almost like a museum. But recently Kasia and another colleague have moved in:
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Eri and I went for lunch in the city, as we do from time to time. Here she is studying the menu:
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We shared the dessert:
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And as often happens, the restaurant treated us to a post-lunch chupito:
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The next day we had the Christmas cocktail for the entire office. After the speech by our Executive Director, the Fire Choir took over:
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The leader of the choir is an American lady, Janet. She is very expressive:
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After the performance, I prowled the crowd, taking pictures of people I found interesting, like Sumi:
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Katarina, a senior lawyer from Croatia:
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Patricia, the financial manager in my department:
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Two ladies from my former department, Filipa and Lila:
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Christmas jumpers:
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On Friday we had my department’s Christmas lunch in a restaurant in the centre:
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Belén in focus, Juan out of focus. The light in the restaurant was difficult, so I needed to use a wide aperture with limited depth of field:
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Our Portuguese trainee Pedro:
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Our German trainee Felicia:
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Our Albanian trainee Beja:
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JuanMi listens attentively:
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Camila laughs heartily:
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Silvia is animated:
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After lunch, we went to a bar for some additional imbibing. Here we are congretating outside the restaurant, getting ready for the 5 minute walk to the bar:
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The light in the bar was even worse than in the restaurant, but people were enjoying it:
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On Saturday night we got together with the usual group of friends to plan New Year’s Eve. In the end we did not manage to take any decisions (as in, where to have the celebration), but we did have a nice dinner in a neighbourhood pizzeria. As always, I pointed my camera at my friends, here Dalal and Mati:
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Dalal and Aurora were engaged in an animated conversation:
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Lest you think I only photograph women, here is Cani, talking to Fernando:
