18mm, f/8, 1/500 sec, ISO 200
I am back from Morocco and the first thing I have to say is just this: wow.
What a week, what a place! To say the very least, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had- from the people I met (both the crew from Morocco and the participants from all over the world) to the food I ate (including both the native tagine and lamb to the McDonald’s), everything was just great.
That said, there’ll be more than enough opportunities to go on and on about the week, but with this first post from my time in Morocco, I want to talk about something else- the other thing that’s making me go ‘wow’: the contributions that came from all of you on flickr.
I’d like to be able to meet and thank each of you personally, but as that’s not something that’s really feasible to do, especially since some of the donations came from outside the country and continent, I’ll have to do for a mass thanks. Thanks to all of your contributions, I was able to raise over $27,000 with more funds still coming in. At the outset, I was hoping to break the minimum $3000 goal, but to break it seven times over- that’s something I could never have even hoped for and for that, I want to thank all of you who helped out from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.
The money raised not just by myself, but by all 57 of the participants will go towards disaster relief all over the world in all capacities, from helping to rebuild houses to delivering milk and medical supplies, and on behalf of all of the people that you have helped me to help, thank you. I truly cannot put into words just how grateful I am.
Now then, I’m sure you’re all wondering if you’re one of the lucky print-winners. To recap, there were a total of five prints to be given away. The first is of Ivan Makarov’s photo, “The Edge of the Day at Natural Bridges”. The second is of Jeremy Brooks’ photo, “It Was a Rainy Day”. The remaining three are by winners choice from my own library. Now then: drumroll please…
The winner of Ivan Makarov’s print is Sonja Burgess (a.k.a. favourite waste of time). I want to publicly thank Sonja not just for her monetary contribution, but for her support as well. Her maintained interest in the challenge both before and after the trip itself was most definitely appreciated.
The winner of Jeremy Brooks’ print is Stefan Baeurle (a.k.a. StefanB). As with Sonja, I appreciate Stefan’s support on twitter and facebook as I underwent the Bike4Life challenge preparations.
The three winners of my prints are Kathy Howard, Daniel Krieger (a.k.a. smoothdude), and Marc Evans (a.k.a. -Clearlight-).
I’ll contact all five of you for your contact information, and in the case of the last three, for your selections as well, but I’d like to, once again, thank all of the rest of you as well. I assure you that no contribution was too small and no contribution went unappreciated.
For the curious, the photo shows the beginning of a 25km afternoon stretch on day 3 of the Bike4Life 2010 challenge.