Expedition #2

Tomorrow we leave for expedition number two. This time we will be camping in Serengeti National Park for four nights. The group who went to Serengeti during the first half of the semester told us a lot of great things about the trip. We are getting close to the annual migration of wildebeest, zebra and gazelle through Serengeti, so our stay should be pretty cool. Around one million wildebeest migrate each year. The other group said they would see dark hills in the distance, only to realize that were actually looking at thousands of wildebeest moving together.

One day of expedition will be spent visiting Ngorongoro Crater. The Crater is the remains of a volcano that erupted and then collapsed in on itself about two or three million years ago. When looking down into it it looks like a giant bowl. Its so big that it has couple lakes inside, and is a home to hundreds of wild animals. All the Tanzania students said it was their favorite part of their stay here, so it should be pretty cool.

So we leave early tomorrow morning, and we will return on Sunday. I'll have plenty of pictures and updates when I return.

I don't have much other new news. Everything in Tanz is still really great. I like the professors a lot. Our wildlife ecology professor is a woman from Oklahoma. She is a primatologist, which I was very excited to hear! She has been in and out of Africa working in different countries for years now. For a while she worked with Jane Goodall studying chimps!! Jane Goodall is pretty famous for her chimp work, so I thought it was really cool when she told us about that. Her name is Dr. Wallis and I'm hoping to do my Directed Research project with her next month. Her DR is on baboons, and because monkeys have always been my favorite I realllly really hope I will get to work on that project with her. It would be really cool to spend a month in Africa researching baboons. Once the research is complete we will write up a paper about our findings. Its always possible that the SFS papers could be published, so that would be extra exciting.

I'll write again next sunday or monday to let everyone know about the trip! Hope all is well at home/abroad. TTYS.

xoxo