It's the 7th day of the trip December the 2nd. It's also a Monday - another school day. School in Changchun is quite interesting. It starts at 8.30 and usually lasts for only about 3 hours. There are classes in the afternoon, though, but those start at 1.30. we split up in the morning for our classes. and spent our time in school until lunch. For lunch, we went to the porridge place not very far from our dorm. There we had a quick bite before some of the goup went back to school for afternoon classes.

Like I've said, classes here are quite interesting. They seem to emphasize non-digital means of design communication over digital means. To elaborate, only now do students learn computer aided design. The first computer lessons for Interior Design and Architecture started today. What was taught was extremely basic (basic as in exploring Windows basic). But this is not odd as it is the first lesson of a 6 month long subject. The IAD students couldn't handle the basic-ness of the class. They skipped it to join their VSC counterparts in the illustration class.

Illustration, like the name suggests, focuses on Illustration. We spent a large part of the lesson in a dimly lit classroom staring at a britly lit screen. The lecturer flashed through images on images of old to-not-so-old illustrations. It was much more interesting than the CAD class and we learnt a substantial amount about visual communication.

I guess it's pretty important to have an open mind to design and to gladly learn as much as possible. If the IAD students hadn't taken the initiative to learn new things, they might not have learnt anything at all.