...and it's winter. Moments of twinkly lights and salty snacks. And too much work to be done before the end of term.
November seemed to be our busy month: First up, Spain: Zaragoza to be precise. I was part of developing an FAO-sponsored course on building equitable value chains (me bringing the equity part to some standard global value chain analysis and economics). Below, a lot of the teaching team (all fascinating people in their own professional right). And also, the whole course, mostly from developing countries (as is the remit of the FAO).
As semester 1 of the traditional academic year does not include teaching for me, it was quite nice to spend a focused amount of time with students, and to have that teaching condensed into a week...a note for me for my own future classes!
As we had online participants, I wasn't able to be as interactive as I normally am, but I did manage to get the hang of software called mentimeter for some real-time participation.
I'd never been to Zaragoza before, and I really enjoyed learning about its history and seeing its palazzos and how they connected to French dynasties and beyond. It's also on the Camino de Compostela.
Roman churches built on Moorish mosques built on ancient roman amphitheatres etc.
The Amsterdam trip was for my annual Board meeting and I only got one photo:
The rest of the family was also pretty busy in November: little crevette has begun competitive gymnastics and is winning medals all over the place.
And for her ballet too:
In November, Small Fry became a teenager in da house!
And Moon and Abuelo visited for the occasion.
We had national memorials and celebrations:
November was also the month that we went on the first Church weekend away, to the Highlands of Scotland.
That was the first snow of the season, and we took the opportunity to also go for a hilly run once we got back to the Ochils.
And December turned out to not be any less busy with the usual end of term concerts and fun snapchat filters :)
My overriding memory of this trip will be the suffocating smog:
And then finally, finally, we were heading towards Christmas:
And of course, our local panto!
19 of us in a house in Elie, with beach sauna and swims, runs, great cocktails and wonderful catch ups. A Kelling Clan Christmas: not to be missed!
Elie is beautiful, but I forgot how windy that east coast is!
I mean, I looooove Christmas, but Christmas on/near the beach, with a sauna, and with an OMA who Went In The Sea is something special indeed.
The week between Christmas and New Year was spent at home, hosting a large number of friends and family. And I was having too much fun to photograph most of it. Which I think is a good end to what was a fun, long, adventurous, ambitious, successful and exciting year!
