Getting Ready for May 2018

The Trip

The "Maymester" is coming quickly. Duquesne University teaches month-long Semesters Abroad for its students, since they are usually in May we have the portmanteau Maymester. A Maymester is four weeks long and the students take two 3-unit courses. I am teaching Astronomy for the Maymester in Tanzania from May 13th to June 10th. The students had their first orientation a couple of weeks ago and Plaxedes Chitiyo, the other professor, and I met with them several weeks ago. It was exciting to see the students we will be spending four weeks starting in a week.

For the first three weeks of the Maymester we will be staying in the small, beautiful beach town of Bagamoyo about 40 miles and an hour and a half drive from the Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania. We will be staying at the Stella Maris Hostel. The accommodations are simple and nice and each room has a view of the beach and ocean. Our classes will be across the road at Marian University College or MARUCO.

The weather? Hot and humid. In Bagamoyo the average temperatures are 84F for the high and 72 for the low with 80% humidity. We will arrive at the end of the rainy season, so the first week may still be rainy. By rainy what is typical is afternoon showers. The weather will cooler and drier when we are in Arusha and on safari with highs around 72 and night time lows in the mid 50's.

Preparation

I am busy doing this semester's work and preparing for the astronomy course. I want to go paperless as much as possible and I want to keep the cost down for the students. We will use the free OpenStax textbook Astronomy, and the great book The Story of Earth, which is available in the Kindle format, to cover earth science for the course. The students can read both of these on their laptops or tablets.

I am very excited and at the same time concerned with how fast the trip is approaching. Kim and I will leave very soon!