Aurora’s Comments About Her Shoot:

Over the summer this previous year, I had the opportunity to travel overseas to Morocco. Morocco is a northwest Afrian country, that is primarily Arabic-French. I went with my fiance at the time to go visit his family and friends and learn about the culture. When I arrived there the sun was beating down so close to the earth I felt like it was just hanging right above my head and being from Chicago, the heat took a lot of getting used to. While visiting, I road camels and drove a sports scooter and rolled a lot of “hasheesh” as they call it. When it came to dressing, the woman all would shoot me looks for how I dressed, and while I thought I was dressing conservative they found my dresses to be highly scandalous. Towards the middle of my trip, I took a detour to Akchour near the northern Rif Mountains, which looked like Heaven had fallen to Earth and landed in between these large canyons. All along Akchour there were little hanoots and small venders that sold the best shawarma. The canyons smelled of braised beef and chicken, while it was filled with natural waterfalls and beautiful wild roses and colorful little daisy flowers. I swam through natural pools and jumped off the top of high ledges into clear turquoise water that went at least 12 feet deep. I had scaled rock walls and learned to cook food out of pots, rolled many joints and just had a good time with my ex and his friends. It was an adventure there to say the least. After all our fun in Akchour we then travelled to Essaouira, which was originally settled by the Portugese. The city was right on the Atlantic Ocean, and it smelled of fresh fish and incense. The buildings were tall tiled with colors of white and meditteranean blue which was beautiful. There were people always humming about, laughing and dancing about, music playing from the groups of musicians that would sing to you for coins and the big fat cats that would twirl around your feet to get scraps of fish or tajine. People would come to you from there little kiosks and offer you swords, jewelry and hand made clothing of gorgeous fabrics. While staying there we had rented an apartment, which was inexpensive and absolutely beautiful. All white with many different rooms, an open ceiling that looked directly into the clear blue sky and a private lookout on the roof just for us. From my bedroom you could hear the crashing and rolling of the waves against the giant building.