day 1 of class

I had my first day of classes and met my teachers and have spent the whole day at the Institute. 

My studio has 7 people in it, 5 students from NCSU in Graphic Design, one in Landscape Design, and 1 that is from Missouri who also studies Graphic Design. Our theme for the semester is "Graphic Design: Will Travel"... our first assignment is to make a Prague Poem made from found typography by taking pictures of the type/ads/labels/posters/whatever catches our eyes. We are supposed to find some kind of similarity or contrast between a group of words and find a composition... without knowing what exactly it translates into. It is very open ended, but I am super excited because I have already started to notice the difference between here and home. I am excited about what is to come, we have scheduled a trip to work with some czech design students in the next week!!

My STS class "Global Sustainable Human Systems" is really going to be great. My teacher is sooo into his class... he asked each one of us to introduce ourselves and explain our live goals and majors... after we grouped all of the desks into a huge circle. He was honestly interested in each and every one of us, and what we could bring to the class. We are exploring how we can bridge the gap between very industrialized cities and third world cities through different tactics like food, human involvement, ... sustainable systems. He has an awesome outlook, and understand that is it not important to dwell but to take action instead. He has planned for us to go to an Organic Farm to do a bit of volunteering, as well as check out the Bee Institute here. As our final project we are going to build small raised bed gardens outside the institute as well.

He left our class with a thought... A friend was part of a small group that wanted to aid an Aborigine village, when the American people went to meet with them in the village an older woman spoke as their leader "If you came here to make us a better people you should turn around and go back, but if you came here because it will benefit both of us we should sit down and talk."

tonight we cooked dinner at the institute as well...

Pasta and tomato sauce, snap beans, and bread, YUM!'