Like all meetups, this year's Hive Open Days in Alicante started and finished in a flash. The weekend was intense and tiring, in a good way.
Day 1
There was a good balance of talks, and plenty of time to socialise especially with the newbies that we managed to onboard. I think there are about 10, and quite a few of them stayed with us for the entire event including the outings. Here's a few of them in the front row, with 
I didn't take many photos of the event, basically I forgot 😅 because I was busy talking to everyone. Here's one of 
It's always nice to learn more about Hive thru the presentations, but it's even better to listen to a mini concert performed by our very own. 
Day 2 - Clean planet day
The next day we did a boat trip to a small island an hour away. There were 28 of us, oldies and newbies plus 2 dogs.
After the quiz, we started the cleanup. These are two of the new onboardees 
I didn't do so well, but found this sock or bandage. Not sure exactly what it is, I didn't analyse it. It's shocking what people throw away in public!! I forgot to take a photo of all the trash we collected, but I'm sure it will come up in another post from someone else.
In the evening, we went to a microbrewery and had some nice craft beer. I think we earned it after a hard days work picking up a lot of trash. Here's me with 
Day 3
On the last day, we stayed in town and Nina did a walkabout. There was a may day festival and the locals were having a blast of a time which made our walk experience that much happier. Then we went to a modern art museum. Modern Art isn't my thing as I normally find it too abstract and can't appreciate it. But I enjoyed this, so much that we felt compelled to leave a little artwork behind.
By this time, a lot of people had left already, and those remaining went for a coffee. There was still a good crowd, me, 
Goodie bag
No meetup is complete without the goodie bag. This year was orange. An unusual but very nice and sharp colour for a tote bag. We also got some sunglasses, essential for sunny Spain, a notepad, one can never have too many of them, and a Hive pen that writes very smoothly. Then there's a bunch of stickers. And finally a community bingo card. I think this is a great icebreaker activity to get people to talk to one another, and I was particularly happy to see the newbies getting involved and talking to everyone. I hope they will become active in the days to come and become regulars on Hive. I know a few of them are very keen and I hope to see them again in future meet ups.
Till next time!!!
