Day 7: Long Day

The team decided to try the restaurant in the hotel after a long days work.  We also tried Moroccan wine for the first time.

It was French night in the restaurant and they had a set menu.  They served some type of fish.  While it was interesting to look at, I was not able to eat much because of the small bones.  Great presentation though.  :-)

The fruit for dessert was wonderful.   I wish that I could eat this at every meal.  I love salads at home but have been a little hesitant to eat them here because of the water being different to our systems.

This will likely be a short blog because it has been another long day and a late night. I'm finding that our normal day has not been ending until after midnight or 1am. We typically work all day on our projects and get back to our hotel around 7pm. By the time we meet as a group and go to dinner, it is usually after 10pm (and sometimes 11pm) before we get back to our rooms for the night. Dinner conversations are great though.  We spend a lot of time talking about our individual projects and how they went for the day.  We usually get great perspectives on issues and challenges because of the different technical and cultural backgrounds that each of us bring.   At dinner each night, we also take turns with each of us providing our 'life story' at each dinner... the conversations have been fascinating.  After we get back to the hotel at night, I have usually been spending another 2-3 hours working on project documents, catching up on email, and updating my blog.  It has been after midnight before I get ready for bed every night since I arrived and most nights have been after 1am.   I don't think I will be catching up on any sleep during this trip.  :-)

Today was a very productive day for us though. We were able to complete the first draft of the Table of Contents for our final deliverable and we have a meeting to review this with the MOA tomorrow. We also completed the revisions for our Statement of Work and made good progress on our interview preparation for next week. We have a meeting with Mohammad first thing in the morning to review our Table of Contents, project schedule, and proposed interviews.... which is a very long list.  We expect that a majority of next week will be spent in talking with the different key stakeholders (e.g. farmers, wholesellers, bankers, other external organizations, etc.) to learn more about their needs.

We ended the day with eating at the restaurant at the hotel tonight and had a nice dinner with the team.  I've posted some pictures because the food presentation was very nice.  We are planning to go to Marrakesh this weekend and are starting to make plans for this travel. It's after 1am again so I'm heading off to sleep. Good night.