Hamza and I have been lucky this past week when it comes to travel - Last weekend I went to Casa for the 2007 DABA/NDI training while he went to the beach, then he had to go back to Casa to pick up his visa; this weekend we went to Fez for an aforementioned conference, and on Sunday to Skhirate to lounge on the beach (and in my case, get insanely sunburnt).   A few photos:

Isn’t McDonald’s here just so much prettier?

My favorite Fassi fountain at sunset

This little fellow posed for me!

Hamza and I attended some of the International Conference on Mediterranean Women and Human Development, admittedly because we had both just finished Laila Lalami’s book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and discovered that she was going to do a small reading at the event.

We caught a couple of speakers before her and an interesting discussion on women’s work.  I must admit that simultaneous translation, something I’m quite new to, is fascinating - but the guy doing the English had a really funny voice and I laughed inappropriately once or twice.

Anyhow, we both really enjoyed the reading and discussion, particularly when Ms. Lalami talked about the dearth of quality children’s books in Morocco, something which I am acutely aware of.  She said of her childhood books:

Not one of these characters looked or talked like me.  In other words, my imagination had been colonized.