I promised more on this Andalusian music.  This was a room with a set of truly joyful people -- a video is already on this blog --it is fantastic music and the players and audience were certainly in consillience -- one super-happy family!  I wanted to point out Kinor Davod -- the guy in the photo below.  He is one of the Moroccon Jews who lives very well here in Casablanca.  He wrote the book that is two photos below -- basically (near as I understand) transliterating the Arabic into the Hebrew. This music did sound a lot like klezmer music -- but not completely.

I want to add that Kinor David felt 100% comfortable here in Casablanca -- he said he had a good life with respect from everyone around him.

What a great ending to the first part of this COACh Workshop!

Tomorrow is where we have more than 130 people -- mostly women, about career advancement.

The Corniche -- the seashore.  Note the party on the sand!

Some of the women who went on this excursion.

This is the best tea place in town -- quite lovely!

This is when I got the recipe for the Moroccan mint tea:
Green Tea with mint leaves!

After the late afternoon excursion, we had our celebration banquet.
Each table got a  half a lamb!

Here we are tearing this apart!

I am realizing that when you do not keep up with your posts, the order gets a little confusing -- but here in Casablanca, there is always a high level of chaos so this blog fits right in!

I would like to say more about the Andalusian Classical Music.  This was such a special, and exciting night!  But I'm out of order so I'll hold that off for just a little bit...

I wanted to mention that on Thursday morning, Jessica Greene (no relation) from George Washington University, worked on evaluation -- near as I can tell it is not unlike the Instructional Design that my sister Ellinor Greene (certainly a relation) does.  This is a vital area of research where one actually can evaluate, with proper metrics, how well people learn and other interactions -- all with different kinds of statistical analysis.  Jessica sent out questionnaires before the meeting and also one at the meeting to track the collaborations.  She had very interesting graphs that showed how the relations between scientists were at the time and will keep track of that as we develop our collaborations.  The talk is probably posted on the COACh web site by now.  I want to laud Geri for having Jessica involved -- too often scientists do not appreciate the value of educational evaluations -- I'm going to try to learn a lot more about this!

Thursday afternoon were more breakout sessions and we better defined how we would self-assemble. The main areas were phosphites, water, and materials.  My group was all about design, analysis, and computation of materials for understanding their properties and design of new functional materials -- an old idea but maybe with some new ideas.  This will be exciting to work out -- the diversity in laboratories, and even backgrounds, will give us new tacks for approaching these old problems.  Here is our group: 

Laura Greene (USA; Physics)

Janet Tate (USA; Physics)

Leila Adnane (Algeria; Chemistry)

Sonia Haddad (Tunisia; Physics)

Nadia Saoula (Algeria; Chemistry)

Rahma Adhiri (Morocco; Chemistry)

Mimouna Baitoul (Morocco; Physics)

This is Janet, Rahma, Leila, Sonia, and me.  

I'm going to post this and then continue with our sight-seeing after the Mosque, the banquet, and the Andalusian classical music -- then the official COACh Career Advancement Workshop on Friday. The exciting finale -- some interesting interactions, and SHOPPING.  But today is a day off and the US team is going to Marakesh!

Visit to the 'Association des Amateurs de la Musique Andalouse'

Leila, Janet, and I ditched the final session of Friday morning to start our white paper / quad chart on Electronic Materials:  This will grow into a proposal coordinating women scientists from Morocco, Tunisia  Algeria, and the US. This is not an artificial collaboration -- we self-assembled and have new ideas on how to create, analyze, and produce new magnetic and superconducting materials.  We plan to have the quad chart to Geri today.  I want it done before my afternoon presentation!

Back to reporting on Wednesday's Mosque madness...

After working through lunch, we started forming our focus groups -- the one I mentioned above.  We got VERY efficient so we could get out and sight-see... so by 3:30 we self-assembled in cars and went to the Hassan II Mosque.  We had our headscarves and went into the first layer. Upon entering, a nice lady guard asked in Arabic whether I was a Muslim (Oy vey, was I that obvious?) and she said I could not enter.  Some of the other US women were more clever in putting on their head scarves and walking in quickly and they got in.  Nora Berrah tried to get me in through a different entrance claiming I was her sister (Nora is my US friend who was raised in Algeria and is Muslim) and arguing with another nice lady in Arabic.  Lots of loud voices and Nora finally gave up and took me out.  The lady apparently told Nora, "Why are you making my job so difficult?"  We could go the next day if we paid -- which I had no problem with but my Muslim hosts were upset that it was a "business."  Such is religion --- can be the same all over the world!

Outside the Mosque.

Kathryn looks perfect with that head scarf and got into the Mosque!

Outside the Mosque

Partially inside the Mosque

Various photos from outside the Hassan II Mosque

Here is my good friend Khadiga Ziat in front of the Hassan II Mosque.

This is a rather glorious sight -- the detail of the carvings and inlays are amazing.

These are places of study outside the Mosque -- I guess like a Yeshiva

On Wednesday afternoon we broke into working groups to self assemble -- I am in  a group with women from all 4 countries to work on electronic materials.  In N. Africa they have good growth capability, but not much in analysis -- and that is opposite to the US so we have niches to fill! We all worked hard to get out and start sight-seeing at 3:30.

There were enough women with cars so we all drove off to the Mosque.  Even with a head scarf I could not get in, they could clearly discern I am not Muslim.  Nora (my friend from the US who is Algerian raised and is a Muslim) tried to get me in claiming I was her sister but that failed (Oy vey -- was I that obvious?).  Some of the US team did a better job and got in -- I'll have to wait and pay as a tourist.

This is Nora and me outside the Mosque -- REALLY windy!

After we went to the Cornish to walk along the water, then to a famous  tea shop.

I'm going to publish more pictures later because I keep erasing my work.

Stay tuned...

Night Sight-Seeing

COACh women out for a night stroll

The Twin Towers in downtown Casablanca. One is a hotel and the other is an office building. There is shopping on the ground level. They let us in to see, but then, after we took pictures, they politely threw us out.

We talked about walking to the Cornish (the seaside) but were told that for women to do that at night was not a good idea. We went back to the hotel.

It is already Friday morning and I have not been posting because it has been so busy (and I'm also desperately trying to keep up with my referee reports...and trying to read some science and keeping up with my group ... all with dubious or no success at all).  I'll try to add some words here and then post pictures ...  now I can include some awesome sight-seeing and precious experiences with some locals.

First, the most important greeting:

• Sallam (peace on you)
• Alaykoum assallam (peace on you, too).

After the panel on Wednesday afternoon, we got into breakout groups to see how we could establish collaborations.  Most of this workshop was composed of chemists, so finding the right group for superconductors or strong electron correlations was a challenge.  Mary Wirth suggested we determine a research goal and work to see how we cold collaborate on it, but in my case, it was more important to see what the capabilities of my group members were and then design the research around that.  You see, it is true I have "holy grails" in my research, but I would be happy working on almost any problem -- maybe that is one of my problems: that I can scatter shot so easily -- but any unanswered question in science can be absolutely fascinating to me.  I just wanted to work with some of the other women -- particularly the N. African ones.

My breakout group consisted of Janet Tate, an old friend who is at Oregon State but born and raised in South Africa, Leila Adane from Algeria who was also an organizer of this workshop and a University Professor at USTHB, Nadia Saoula, who is in a National Laboratory in Algeria (DCTA), and Sonia Haddad, the theorist from Tunisia.  We shared our ideas and found what could and could not be done -- won't bore you here but between alloy growth (Algeria), a variety of thin fil capabilities (Algeria, IL, and OR), computational materials modeling (Tunisia) and a whole lot of materials characterization (US), we had a plan to hammer out.

Each group reported -- one was on phosphates, one on water, and ours -- all with positive plans.  We all worked on developing our research plans over dinner -- but also shared a lot about our lives.

After dinner we went out -- first time in a day and a half for me.  We were a group of about 10 women. It was about 9:30 pm and we really stuck together and found no problems -- sticking to busy streets.  Crossing the streets was quite a challenge. I finally noticed that there were indeed streetlights -- just not obviously positioned and rarely obeyed.

I'm going to post this and then try to post related pictures.

Workshop Photos

In MAD boarding for CMN

Opening reception

Opening dinner:
Jessica Greene (instructional design, center) and Norah Berrah (right)

View from Workshop at top of hotel

Alternate view from top of Workshop hotel

Nora Berrah and me

Kathryn Pharr and Mary Wirth

Various candid shots of the workshop and working meals: