Hamster Dancin' Around the World

Lovely pics and lovely town! Now I want to visit...

Ducks feted in Adelaide.


There's a bunch of free ones, too.

Lol...as I walked home tonight, past the river, I was overflown by eight ducks, two ibis, a pair of black swans and a pelican.

Which is amusing, because I was roughly here:




(this:


is looking at where I was from the other direction...you can see it's quite built up)


walking in rush hour traffic......which the birds flew over and through as if they were part of it.


here's a few of your rellies on the river:




and your black cousin:

I have a bucket load of FF points on 2 airlines, Qantas and Malaysian. Malaysian will only take me to Kuala Lumpur - do I want to go there??

Qantas points will take me just about anywhere in Oz & NZ. Where to go?

I have heaps of points but v. short on cash!

Waiting to win Lotto!

If I can get a good bid on Set, and sell everything else I own, I could go to Adelaide too!

You're very lucky, Miss Penny, to have visited such a nice looking city and have such a pleasant hostess there.

Lol!


It's only the price of an airline ticket.

Sooooo, you're not bidding?

I ain't crossing the midget...she's cute, but scary.

Penny's back in town. Unfortunately, pics will have to wait as I left the camera in Morocco with kids and Mr. Duck. Penny will be reporting her summary here this evening.

Who's next?

Yay, missed you guys!

(Penny and FreeDuck too.)

As for who's next... uh... I don't know!

Dagmaraka has a friend who was in Cambodia and was interested in hosting Penny... is she still there and still interested, dag?

Any readers who are interested in hosting who haven't already done so?

Anyone I'm overlooking who was already slated to be next?


Looking forward to written accounts first and pics later... (Morocco...!)

Yeah, I'm happy I actually got to write a bit while we were there. I took Deb's advice and left the journal here (due to some elicit biological matter that the Homeland Security Nazi dogs would surely sniff on the way back) but bought a small notepad while I was there and wrote about some things that I think sozlet will find interesting. I'll staple or glue the pages from the notepad into her journal. I badly wanted to get a passport stamp for her but couldn't swing it.

Anyway, glad to be back! Sozlet will be glad to know that if the election were held right now in Morocco then Obama would be president ; )

Hi all, Penny here. I had a good time in Morocco with the Duck family and met a lot of interesting places. We did a lot of driving in the country and saw many interesting things, like forests of cork trees (we actually caught a glimpse of a harvest, where they cut the bark from the tree to make corks and other things) and olive trees. I saw lots of goats and sheep and donkeys and things. I even saw two cows walking on a pedestrian overpass over the highway to Rabat. That was something!

I got to visit the Moroccan cities of Rabat, Kenitra, and Fez, as well as Mr. Duck's home town, a small and dusty village called Ma'aziz. The cities are very modern and look a lot like some European cities. Rabat, the capital, is very near the ocean and quite close to some good beaches and fishing. We went there a few times on the train from Kenitra, a somewhat smaller port city about 30 km north of Rabat where Mr. Duck's sister lives. She has an apartment very close to the train station so we had fun walking to the station and hopping on trains to go places.

I took a short two day trip to Fez just to see what was there. We found a lovely, old, indoor market in the medina where you can find all kinds of handcrafts and other things to buy. You can even go into some of the places and watch the craftsmen working. We saw silver workers, people dying cloth and thread, weavers, and iron workers. The streets are so narrow there that cars can't fit inside, so people use donkeys to carry goods from place to place inside the medina. I was quite surprised to see that! There is a hat named after Fez -- a little red bowl shaped thing with a tassel on it. Oh yeah, and some street performers went around singing, beating a drum, and banging little cymbals while twirling the tassels on their hats. I got a picture of them, which FreeDuck will post when the rest of the Duck family gets back in a few weeks with the camera. At night I took a walk down a lovely street that, unfortunately, I can't remember the name of. It had a huge promenade (I think that's what it's called) down the middle with park space and benches and wide sidewalks. You can walk for blocks and blocks in this safe and beautiful walk. And best of all, up above, there were strings of lights hung up in rows like a gigantic ceiling curtain of stars. It was stunningly beautiful.

I enjoyed spending time with Mr. Duck's mother, Fatna, and sisters in Ma'aziz. They are incredibly nice people and made me feel very welcome. I learned that women of Fatna's generation were often tattoed when they got married. Fatna herself has a tattoo on her face -- a star between her eyebrows and a few vertical lines from her bottom lip to the bottom of her chin. She's losing her sight but is very strong and independent and has been living there so long that she can find her way around without seeing. I also learned that Moroccans often eat from one communal dish with their hands. My favorite dish there is the chicken with olives that Mr. Duck's sister, Rabiya makes. I learned many more things about Moroccan culture there, and I also learned a few words of Moroccan Arabic. Like "shukran", which means "thank you", "nas-ti mzian", which means "did you sleep well", "niss niss", a drink that is half coffee and half milk, some other useful words, and one phrase specifically for the policemen that I won't repeat here but that has something to do with a person's sister.

It was a great trip and FreeDuck wrote a lot about it in my diary. I hope sozlet will enjoy reading about it if she can read FreeDuck's writing -- it truly is awful.

This is one I've been really looking forward to -- and that's why. Wow.

The details are fascinating -- love the ceiling of stars, and also the facial tattoos.

Have you been there before, FreeDuck?

Can't wait for more stories, and photos.

(Sozlet says not to worry about handwriting, she's used to reading mine... ;-))

Cool, I'm glad you liked it. There's actually so, so much more. I'd start writing about one thing and realize there were so many different tangents I could go on because there is so much more to tell that I think would be interesting, especially to a kid.

We've been there before, twice before the kids, where we went and saw more of the country -- Marakech(exciting, but tourism central and not really that pleasant), Agadir (beautiful beach city apparently loved by Germans), even Ourzazate (down south, they make movies there). I wish this trip could have been more like that for Penny's sake, but this one was mostly just to visit family. Still, there were lots of things to see and I hope sozlet enjoys the diary and the eventual pictures.

This is way cool. I do visa trips every 3 months (places like Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico and thereabouts) and can bring Penny along for one.

My next one is in August and I have to go to San Diego to get some of my things but after that I could let sozlet pick a country near Costa Rica and get two more Latin American countries on her passport.

That sounds great, Robert!

Do you have a top three (for example) places you were thinking about going?

Would you like Penny to be shipped to you in San Diego or Costa Rica? (Make sure Harry and Fiona are nice to her...!!)

Let's see if anyone else wants to host Penny in the US between now and August, then can send Penny to Robert. (When do you need her by?)



FreeDuck, I hope the photos unleash a bunch more stories of Morocco. Tangents are welcomed.

I don't suppose there is a chance Penny could meet/spend time with Fbaezer if you were to go to Mexico?????????????????

Yeah - bring on the Morocco stories - a place very high on my wish list!

I don't care what - I just want to hear about it!

Morocco pics?

The camera will be here tonight and I will try to post more then. Since nobody was in line for Penny, I sent her back to Morocco to visit Marrakech with the rest of the Duck family. Hopefully Mr. Duck and the ducklings took notes and lots of pictures.

More soon.

In Morocco they do henna tattoos. They are very ornate designs done using the herb henna (mixed with water and some other stuff) on hands and feet. Here Ducklet had some designs done. Sometimes they are done so that they completely cover the hands and feet and look like gloves and socks almost.