The End

We are back in Austria and so it's the end of our blog!

Yesterday we had a long travel but now we are at home and everyone of us is fine!
It was a really great time in Southampton!
This are the last pictures of us at the airport in Stansted.

Bye,bye Southampton!

Our last hours in Southampton! This is the time were everybody is fighting with his suitcase. It is terrible, how much stuff women take with them when they are travelling! It took me about one hour until I found the right system where it is still possible to pack the last few things in without having to jump on the suitcase to get it closed! In five minutes we are going to have our last breakfast here at the Kimber Halls of residence. We chose to go by Taxi to the coach station because of the heavy suitcases. Today we have to do a more than 12 hour journey to go back home! Fortunately, the coaches here in England are comfortable.
We hope we will have a good and save trip!

It's done!

Now it is all over. We' ve done our presentation today afternoon. At the beginning we were all quite frightenend as we saw the camera which filmed us during the presentation. In the end it wasn't such a big problem because we didn't have to watch us presenting. All in all it went quite good, some little mistakes and we were very nervous but I think we can be very satisfied. Last night we finished the written part and the blog will be "closed" when we are back home.
The farewell trip to Hythe was quite funny and nice! We went by ferry to this little "town" which is a very typical one for England, we think. The pub we went in got full very quickly as we entered and it was also quite nice there.
On the way back we went by a little train to the ferry. It was a very nice evening and we thank Carolyn, Kevin and Colin for their accompany!
What also has to be mentionend here, is, that the University payed the ferry tickets and one drink for us. Thank you very much indeed!
This two weeks here in Southampton went by very quickly. They have been interesting, exhausting but also very nice and funny. We enjoyed our stay here very much but also look forward to the following holiday - week!

The day of our presentation!

Right now we are all quite nervous because we will be doing our presentation in about an hour. Although we've done 2 "dress rehersals" we still feel a little bit insecure because we are not used to doing presentations in English.
Still, we're all looking forward to a nice relaxed evening and we're all exited about our farewell trip!
We try not to think about tomorrow because we are all scared and horrified of having to pack out suitcases.

The final Countdown...

As today is Thursday, there isn't much time left for working on our projects. Tomorrow afternoon we all have to do our presentations and for this reason it is very quiet in the student's residence today...Everyone is working diligently to polish the written part.
Rebecca, who was our lector today, helped us with the structure and some useful phrases. Although we've learned all these things in the last semester it was good to refresh our minds about the most important parts of the framework.
Today was the first day we could "enjoy" the English weather. As if we nearly always had sunshine in the last days, it wasn't a problem. I personally was happy that I could finally put on my coat which I brought with me and which took a lot of space in my suitcase!
Tomorrow evening Carolyn, Kevin and Colin take us out for a farewell trip to Hythe to which we all look very forward to!

Brendoncare Knightwood Care Home

... a very, very long day..... In the afternoon we heard a talk in the Brendoncare Knightwood Care Home. This is an adult care home which was very interesting to visit. It is open for three weeks and is only for persons who don't have mentaly problems, because the nurses aren't trained for this. There aren't many nurses employed because they are only there for the case of need.
On this picture you can see a bungalow which can only be bought by people over 65.

This home isn't very close to the city of Southampton and so we waited for the public bus to go home......but the right bus didn't come...... after about an hour we started to walk to the railway station....but we didn't know where this was and so we had to ask several times for the way (thanks to all passers-by who helped us!)......At six o'clock we came back to our residence. It was a really interesting day.

Tuesday

Surprisingly today was again a very exhausting day ;-) Although we didn't attend lessons at the University we are all completely beaten now!

Our day started with a talk about Portsmouth Hospital and the Health Care System in general which was very easy to listen to because the lecturer had the ability to explain things in a very simple and understandable way. During the talk one could observe the faces of the listeners lightening up because a lot of questions finally could be answered.

After a very short nearly not existing lunch break we visited a centre which specialises on the care for children. There we spend a very well-organised afternoon with several different talks and a nice tea and coffee break.

We took with us a lot of impressions from various important sectors of the children care like adoption. Especially the talk about adoption resulted in a very lively discussion about the reasons for teenagers getting pregnant more often in the UK than in Austria.

A very interesting experiment conducted by four social workers showed us the complex process from the first register of domestic violence to the final solution.

Unfortunately we experienced a little information-overdose throughout this afternoon because the subject was probably just too complex for one afternoon. But still we got a first insight and we were also very pleasantly suprised by the warm welcome and the delicious bisciuts!

More information about our project

We decided to more or less divide our project into three parts. First we want to write a little bit about the management and funding of NPOs in general which i will include definitions of various terms. Then we decided to explain our complex subject with two examples - the management and funding of the MacMillan Cancer Support and the National Trust because we do believe that these organisations do fantastic work and they are worth taking a closer look at them. In our last part we want write a short resumeé including a comparison of the two organisations and our personal conclusions.

pictures of Salisbury

This are two pictures which show the lovely town Salisbury.
On the left side there you can see one of the 'shopping streets'.
The picture on the right side shows us in one of these streets.
It was a really relaxing afternoon.

The National Trust - Philipp's House

Relaxed after the nice weekend we had a good start in this new week. On our timetable we had a visit to the Philipp's House - a National Trust property - near by Salisbury. We were all very amazed by the nice landscape and the beautiful architecture. After a short introduction by the inhabitant we got a funny and interesting overview about the history followed by a walkabout through the public rooms of the house. Our "guide" was one of the 43 000 volunteers of the National Trust who told us some blithe storys about the eponym of the property, the rooms and the library. Also in Philipp's house we were invited for a coffee/tee brake which we enjoyed in the huge park while sitting in the sun.
The brake was followed by a speech about the National Trust in general which was very helpful for our project.
Although we were apparantly intended spending this two weeks studying 24/6 (in our case, but maybe even 24/7; who knows?), we got the afternoon for a stay in Salisbury were we visited the cathedral and explored this charming city by ourselves. Some of us even went to the famous place Stonehange.