Christmas in DREC

Only 5 days to go now until the big day. Department festivities began on 6 December with the party organised by OBRESS (Oxford Brookes Real Estate Student Society) for real estate and construction students at Camera in Oxford. They didn't send me any photos so it was obviously a good night.

Next up were the postgraduate students. Students and staff on the MSc programmes in real estate went out for a meal at Cafe Coco. Photo courtesy of Tiffany Luckett.

Meanwhile a small group of staff were practising hard for their first musical production. The staff carol concert eventually took place on Tuesday 18 December. And the full effect, with soundtrack, was apparently captured on video. More of this in the New Year. For now, take a look at some photos and see the concentration on those faces (photos taken by Mike Patrick):

After the carols came the staff Christmas lunch and Nick French's Secret Santa exploits*. Location: The Britannia in Headington. (Photos by the Ed):

* It works like this: each person draws a number out of the bag. Starting with the highest number, each person selects a present and unwraps it. Just when you are admiring your present, the next person (with a lower number) is unwrapping theirs...and deciding they prefer yours. And you have to swap! And so it goes on to number one who can take anything they like.

Secret Santa himself (without beard)

Mike with by far the best Secret Santa present

Nick unwraps his heart. He swapped it.

Barbara drew the number one ticket which meant that once her present was unwrapped she could then forcibly swap her present with any other that took her fancy. What did she end up with? The Tin Tin bag of course. 

Our waiter. He coped very well in extreme circumstances. Our lunch lasted for 3 hours.

Staff had also brought in contributions of festive food for the North Oxford Food Bank and this was dropped off later that night. Take a look at the work being done in Oxford here.

Finally, you may have seen it before, but here it is again. The DREC Christmas Tree. Made in response to the lack of decorations in the Abercrombie Building.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!