After resting a bit in Mahres, we decided to do some more touring. Our first visit was to Sousse, to see the Great Mosque, built in 851 during the Aghlabid dynasty. It has a gorgeous courtyard and domed tower which probably functioned as a minaret.

The Mosque felt as old as it looked, which is to say, ancient. There's a sort of quiet awe that overcomes you to be in places like this.

After completing our visit of the zawiya, we decided to head into the Old City for some lunch, shopping, and to pray (once it opened for prayer) at the Zaytuna University.

I love revisiting places I've captured before. It's a lot of fun to take different shots or capture different perspectives of similar places, or even to get a similar shot as before but with more experience and better equipment! Such is the case with the first photo below—the last time I'd visited Tunis I'd wanted to capture the Tunisian flag banner against the architecture, and I did it again but from a different viewpoint.

It's like a bookmark in my memory and also in my photography.

The next site we visited was the zawiya and khalwa of the great scholar and saint Imam Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili. It was a beautiful place in the midst of a large cemetery. The tiles were hot beneath our feet and the colours vibrant on that blazingly sunny day, our surroundings emanating a near tangible sense of peace and rest despite that it was undergoing some repairs. The caretakers were very sweet and welcoming, as they always are in these great places.

Earlier this year, I took a twelve-day vacation to Tunisia with my parents. I've only visited twice, once when I was a baby, and once in 2011. I was happy to go back, and was very much looking forward to a vacation of sun and sand and sightseeing.

Sidi Bou Saîd is a gorgeous place, visually reminding me of Santorini with all the blues and whites and the homes clinging to cliffs leading to the sea. We stayed at a lovely little Airbnb with stunning views. I enjoyed breakfasting on the balcony in the sun, perusing one of the Regency romances I'd brought along with me for some light reading. Below are the views from the Airbnb and a little of the interior.

The colour scheme of the town was, apparently, introduced by French painter and musicologist Rodolphe d'Erlanger, who also helped preserve traditional North African music and instruments. Below is a gallery of sundry sights around town, including that of Museum Dar el-Annabi, which was a treasure trove of historical artifacts and beautiful architecture.

Terre Bleu, a gorgeous lavender farm you may have seen all over instagram and facebook, was a place my family, friends and I had been wanting to visit for ages. So one weekend, although it kept threatening to rain, we finally made the trip, and had a lovely time.

We first surveilled the decadent fields while sipping lavender lemonade, licking lavender ice cream, and nibbling on lavender flavoured cheese (not pictured). Lavender is a subtle flavour, sort of floral, sort of savoury. 

The fields were alive with the musical hum of hundreds, maybe thousands of busy bees pollinating. It wasn't as frightening as you might think, being surrounded by bees. It was awe inspiring, watching these tiny little critters fly about and nuzzle the flowers, hard at work.

Terre Bleu has their own beehives along with their bees, and we were able to see a queen surrounded by her workers, and the happy, wiggling dance that bees do to communicate to their fellows. 

Knowing I had ten days before my last exam of third year, that my siblings were off school and work, and that my mom would have Friday free due to the holidays, my little sister and I scrambled to plan a family trip.

We checked the weather forecast (Friday would be gorgeous but Saturday rainy), found a hotel open off-season, and mapped the routes we would take. Only then did we let everyone else in on our plans, and it went off without a hitch. 

A BBQ lunch was packed, snacks bought, and pyjamas selected, and then we were off! Check-in was late, so our first stop (after Timmies and washroom breaks) was hiking on the Bruce Trails!

My sharp-eyed mom spotted a snake while we were walking!

Then we found a cliff we wanted to climb, which we had climbed (with my dad) the last time we came by. Gotta keep up those traditions, y'know?

A few minutes later, we emerged onto our favourite view! The splendid grotto!

And proceeded to explore and then picnic.

After checking into and resting at the hotel, we headed to a beach ten minutes away that my sister had found called Singing Sands beach–and they really do sing! I'm not sure what causes it, but its ethereal and lovely. We had a BBQ there and watched the gorgeous sunset and beautifully bright stars.

Hope you had a great Easter holiday! Comment below and tell me how it went!

I drove from Edmonton to to Golden, Banff to Kicking Horse to Calgary to Kelowna over the course of three days, with about 13 children unrelated to me. 

There are certain things you notice when road-tripping with carsick, bored toddlers when your phone is dead (or about to die) and the radio/audiobook/CDs will only make your headache, and their crying, worse.

I noticed, vocally, often, the trucks like very fast giants always ahead or behind us.

I noticed the eagles and hawks and ravens peering down at us from telephone poles and old trees, or from their heights in the sky.

I noticed mountains--countless mountains--craggy and ancient, white-headed or bare, scraping shoulders and immovable and yet, always, beckoning us into and through their arms.

I noticed the rivers, which paled the further we drove until they were the colour of sea-glass, that dusty pale green-blue colour, glimmering in the sun or snaking under clouds.

I noticed the signs everywhere--unpronounceable place names and warnings of avalanches, deer, elk, snow, moose, grizzlies, steep turns and upcoming stop signs.

I noticed to entertain and distract unhappy small children. And in the doing, I noticed a lot more than I would have been consciously aware of otherwise. I'm a social traveller. It's not as fun for me to go somewhere if I can't enjoy it in the company of someone else, if I cannot watch them enjoy it too.

And children have an endless capacity to be entertained or awed or excited about something, as long as you point it out to them with great enthusiasm or respond to them eagerly. 

(There are exceptions. A tired, hungry, sick kid will be miserable with great gusto until they decide not to be, or are fed/napped/soothed).

So really, a road-trip with 13 kids was a drive in the park. 

​Here are the photos of our stay, which was beautiful and exhausting and amazing all at once. More photos and video are viewable on my instagram (just scroll down a bit).

My experience in Tanger was extraordinarily beautiful but also fairly private. Unfortunately, I was also really exhausted and busy throughout and so don't have many photos of the place itself. We drove through the night, climbing higher and higher through the mountains, the stars growing brighter the farther we drove from civilization.

We were then greeted at a humble home which always housed the visitors of the saint Abdus'Salam ibn Mashish, and after a huge dinner, we slept. At dawn we rose to visit the mausoleum itself. 

And then I bid Morocco a (hopefully) impermanent goodbye. All in all, this trip was overwhelming in good and bad ways, from the heat to the vistas to the people to the food. I'll never forget it, and I don't want to. Here's a little video I made to commemorate the three months.

It was to be my very last road-trip in Morocco, and it took place as a caravan of a huge group of friends and fellow students of my Sheikh. We were going to Chefchaouen and then to Tanger to visit the mausoleum of Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish.

From there I would be heading to Casablanca airport, and then home, alone of all my family for about a week, so that I could prepare for my third year at University. 

We left at dawn for our first destination: Ouazzane, a city home to many Sufi saints, as well as a holy site of pilgrimage for many Moroccan Jews.

The next phase of our trip took hours. Our bus was, at first, quite comfortable. It carried about twenty of us. But as time wore on and the sun rose higher, it began to get hotter. The AC had broken. Every rest-stop saw us emerge like a flood to buy drinks. By the time we arrived in Chefchaouen, we had sweated through most of our clothing. The climate inside the bus was something like a sauna.  Arriving at the blue city was, as a result, incredibly refreshing to us, in a way we might not have appreciated otherwise. 

The city is just...incredible. I knew how blue it would be, but seeing it was a different matter entirely. It's so...cooling to the eyes! It feels too as though one has stepped backwards in time somehow. We wandered the streets until we came to a vertical strip of vibrant green. A stream had carved its way down the mountain, and burbling ice cold water pooled and trickled and offered itself to any person or creature willing to splash in it. 

By this time, towards the last month of our trip, the Rujulah Retreat attendees and some friends from Canada had arrived in Fez. One day, my mother and I took our friend to visit some of the graves and mausoleums of the saints at the Bab al-Futuh graveyard, overlooking Fez. We had already been, but she needed a guide and we were always up for an outing. 

The climb was much harder than it looked. There isn't a walkway, just footpaths visitors had created over the years, and the terrain was rocky and treacherous. Though we began our trip early, the sun was still hot, and soon we were sweating and thinking longingly of water. 

​The trek was well worth it for the view alone though.

Our first visit was to the grave of Abdul Wahid ibn 'Ashir, a premier scholar of law. I memorized part of his famous poem on Islamic creed as a little girl. We would not have found his burial grounds were it not for our guide (one of many who work the graveyards as guides).

Then we were off, climbing higher and slightly eastwards, when suddenly my mom cried out, squinting into the sun's glare. She had spotted someone she later swore she had been wondering if she would meet. It was a little old lady who, on my mother's most recent previous visit to Fez, had guided her directly to many of the greatest mausoleums.

They greeted each other cheerily, and the lady led us on, now going on a slight descent, for which we were grateful for. At last we came to a building with the characteristic dome designating it the final resting place of someone of high importance.

It was the gravesite of the brother-saints, Yusuf and Abdulrahman Al-Fasi. It was a beautiful place serene and cool under a cloud of jasmine and a towering tree, and completely empty.

The descent down was very quick and quite fun. We refreshed ourselves with fresh lemonade from a rolling cart swarming with fairly harmless though quite terrifying looking bees.