Wow what a weekend. We ended up finishing right at the deadline at noon on Monday.
I was in a group with Stacy and 3 KIT Students: Eriko, Kyohei, and Yu. The language barrier wasn't too hard to over come. They spoke pretty good English but sometimes we had to reword what we wanted to say or try to explain what a word meant. It sounded like the last time they had studied English was back in high school so after hearing that I was really impressed. I don't think I could even start to hold a conversation based on the Spanish I learned back in high school. They hardest thing I think was just trying to get them to make a final decisions about things, for example, like what site to pick. We had it narrowed down to two possibilities and they kept flipping back and forth. I'm not sure if it was they couldn't decide or that they were taking a while to translate their opinions into English. For the most part, after we had agreed on the concept we left most of design decisions to them to work out because it seemed to be able decide on things a lot faster and I liked most of what they came up with.
On Saturday I worked on the getting the site put into the computer while Stacy, Yu and Eriko worked on developing the floor plans. Kyohei wasn't there because he had to go to work.
By the end of Saturday we had finalized what the shapes of the different homes were going to be.
For the last 2 days we divided up tasks the Kriko, Kyohei, and Yu worked on the model, Stacy worked on the sections and I worked on the floor plans and elevations. I had gotten a quick sketch of the floor plans but it was a bit vague on sizes and what the facades were going to look like.
The meals Sunday are worth writing about.
For lunch we ordered take out. The Japanese students heard us talking about pizza and said that there was a place that delivers. I lookup the place and it turned out to be Domino's pizza but boy is it expensive here, close to $40 for a large pizza with pepperoni. That was too pricey for us so we ended up getting take out from Coco's, a Fastfood chain here that serves Curry dishes. It was good.
That night we went out to a local restaurant were you sort of cook your own food on a skillet built into the table. I had fried noodles and pork. They spread out on the table already cooked some and then you can cook it to what you want. The KIT students order this one thing that was like a pancake with chopped vegetables in it and then topped with fried noodles. Its was interesting to try.
When I got ready to work on the exterior it was very hard do get out of them what they wanted it to look like. They were designing it as they built the final model which wasn't necessarily bad but it meant they needed to get it finished in time for me to finish my stuff. I tried several time to get them to sketch their ideas but I don't think they even knew exactly what they were building.
The model wasn't finished until exactly at noon so the only thing of mine we ended up using were the floor plans. I just didn't have enough time to get the elevations updated or my 3d model updated to match the final model. I didn't really matter in the end. Their model looked very nice so any of my 3d stuff wouldn't have really added anything to the presentation.
The presentations were done in all English and most of the Japanese students got really nervous presenting and would only say about a sentence or two and then pass off to someone else. Our review went really well. The Project turned out very nice and is something I will definitely put in my portfolio.
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