{"id":4531,"date":"2024-12-28T18:21:42","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T17:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4531"},"modified":"2024-12-28T19:00:58","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T18:00:58","slug":"week-50-christmas-festivities-in-alicante","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/?page_id=4531","title":{"rendered":"Week 50: Christmas festivities in Alicante"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was the last working week of the year, and so the customary festive activities were on. On Monday we had the office-wide Christmas party, and later in the week our reading club WeRead met for its end-of-year meeting, partly to discuss December’s book, and partly to have an end-of-year celebration, complete with Secret Santa gift exchange.<\/p>\n

50_1<\/strong>
\nThe office party was held in the atrium of our office, starting at lunchtime on Monday. Here is Jo\u00c3\u00a3o, the Executive Director of our office, talking to our head of communications before his opening speech:
\n\"DSF3108\"<\/p>\n

50_2<\/strong>
\nJo\u00c3\u00a3o speaking, not too long:
\n\"DSF3114\"<\/p>\n

50_3<\/strong>
\nThe first item on the agenda was a performance by our office choir, who posed for me first:
\n\"DSF3111\"<\/p>\n

50_4<\/strong>
\nThe choir sings, as always led by their American director Janet:
\n\"DSF3115\"<\/p>\n

50_5<\/strong>
\nI then wandered around in the crowd, picking out people that I like to photograph, starting with my colleague Stephanie from my old department:
\n\"DSF3112\"<\/p>\n

50_6<\/strong>
\nEri in conversation:
\n\"DSF3121\"<\/p>\n

50_7<\/strong>
\nTina, laughing heartily:
\n\"DSF3123\"<\/p>\n

50_8<\/strong>
\nTwo French ladies, Claire and B\u00c3\u00a9reng\u00c3\u00a8re:
\n\"DSF3132\"<\/p>\n

50_9<\/strong>
\nPaloma and Rodrigo:
\n\"DSF3137\"<\/p>\n

50_10<\/strong>
\nThe servers did an admirable job navigating the crowd with their trays:
\n\"DSF3138\"<\/p>\n

50_11<\/strong>
\nA rather eye-catching tatoo:
\n\"DSF3140\"<\/p>\n

50_12<\/strong>
\nTamara with silly headgear:
\n\"DSF3153\"<\/p>\n

50_13<\/strong>
\nOn Tuesday evening our book club met a bar in the centre. While walking from the parking garage to the bar, I took in the city. Avenida Alfonso El Sabio is one of the city’s main thoroughfares:
\n\"DSF3155\"<\/p>\n

50_14<\/strong>
\nMercado Central:
\n\"DSF3158\"<\/p>\n

50_15<\/strong>
\nAvenida de la Constituci\u00c3\u00b3n, leading to the main theatre with the Christmas tree:
\n\"DSF3161\"<\/p>\n

50_16<\/strong>
\nA bar with a fitting name:
\n\"DSF3164\"<\/p>\n

50_17<\/strong>
\nI arrived at the bar where the book club was meeting. This month’s book was a novel by
\nGerman writer Wolfgang Herrndorf called “Tschick”, or “Why we took the car” in the English translation. I had actually read it in the original German and was very pleased with myself because of that. We sat around and discussed the book first:
\n\"DSF3165\"<\/p>\n

50_18<\/strong>
\nSince this was our little Christmas party, people came appropriately attired: Here, my Bulgarian colleague Yasen:
\n\"DSF3166\"<\/p>\n

50_19<\/strong>
\nMy Dutch colleague Harrie, whose antlers look at bit under the weather:
\n\"DSF3167\"<\/p>\n

50_20<\/strong>
\nWe have a new German member Karin:
\n\"DSF3171\"<\/p>\n

50_21<\/strong>
\nThen we moved on to the gift exchange. The rules are simple. Everyone brings a book from his or her collection, so no buying new books for this purpose. People pick at random, ensuring of course that they don’t pick a package that they themselves have contributed. Here, Eri is unwrapping her book, which as it happens, was from me:
\n\"DSF3196\"<\/p>\n

50_22<\/strong>
\nI gave her one of my favourite books, “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac:
\n\"DSF3197\"<\/p>\n

50_23<\/strong>
\nMaria posing with her present, together with Kari:
\n\"DSF3179\"<\/p>\n

50_24<\/strong>
\nKari with his present:
\n\"DSF3189\"<\/p>\n

50_25<\/strong>
\nUrsula has a good time:
\n\"DSF3192\"<\/p>\n

50_26<\/strong>
\nFinally, Caroline with her present, fitting for a Dutch lady. Caroline is the founder of the book club:
\n\"DSF3194\"<\/p>\n

50_27<\/strong>
\nOn Thursday after work I had an errand in the centre, so I went for a walk around Plaza Monta\u00c3\u00b1eta, site of Alicante’s main nativity display:
\n\"DSF3202\"<\/p>\n

50_28<\/strong>
\nLights:
\n\"DSF3203\"<\/p>\n

50_29<\/strong>
\nFather and daughter:
\n\"DSF3210\"<\/p>\n

50_30<\/strong>
\nA face in the crowd:
\n\"DSF3208\"<\/p>\n

50_31<\/strong>
\nOn Saturday I cycled to Busot and Jijona. In Busot, a woman was stretching to photograph the nativity display:
\n\"1040648\"<\/p>\n

50_32<\/strong>
\nThis is what she was photographing:
\n\"1040650\"<\/p>\n

50_33<\/strong>
\nOn the way to Jijona, I passed the impressive new solar plant:
\n\"1040653\"<\/p>\n

50_34<\/strong>
\nSome people complain about spoiling the landscape, but I find it much more important to save the planet. Furthermore, there was no landscape to be spoiled here; before the solar plant was built, it was just a shrubby, barren field. Now it is put to good use:
\n\"1040654\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was the last working week of the year, and so the customary festive activities were on. On Monday we had the office-wide Christmas party, and later in the week our reading club WeRead met for its end-of-year meeting, partly to discuss December’s book, and partly to have an end-of-year celebration, complete with Secret Santa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4205,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4531"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4531"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4535,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4531\/revisions\/4535"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fotocycle.dk\/paws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}