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.

Pictures of our team in Bournemouth

Now I want to introduce you to our team!
On the first picture you can see Christina who was a little bit sad that she forgot her swimsuit at home.
The second picture shows you Romina on the beach and
on the last picture you can see Julia.

Bournemouth

Today we went on a lovely trip to Bournemouth which is about half an hour away from Southhampton. We enjoyed approximately 3 hours on the beach watching a dozen children building and destroying sandcastles. After eating some sandwiches at the beach we decided to explore the town center. Impressed by the architecture and the beautiful lanes we maundered around for 2 hours. Exhausted by the fatiguing walk we took a break in a petite cafe where we rewarded ourselves with some delicious milkshakes!
We were also quite surprised about the condition of English trains because we for some reason expected them to be old and ugly. But instead our Virgin train was very clean and more modern than our trains in Austria.

Tomorrow we're going to visit Salisbury - a trip we are really looking forward to! To be continued...

Announcement

We just wanted to make clear once and for all that we don't want any inpolite and insulting comments on our blog! Of course we are always open for criticism and are very thankful for good tips! Unfortunately we had a very offending comment which we decided to delete because we don't want our blog to be a platform for people who can't communicate their opinion in a polite way.

Run through Nature for Nature

On Friday in our lessons we had to think about a strategy how to get money for a NPO (in our lesson it was The National Trust). We also had to include a company in this fictitious project.
In this picture you can see our strategy:
We want to make a run for nature which is a charity run. The companies Volvic and Nike we should underwrite the run. Volvic should offer the water during the run and also should pay 10 Pounds per participant who finishes the run.
Nike should offer for each participant a T-Shirt.
The entrance fee will be 10 Pound per participant. 8 Pound of this 10 Pound gets directly to The National Trust.
There will be different kinds of runs to different times all over England.

Weekend!

Our first week passed by and we can now enjoy our stay here without having to go to the university.The weather is very fine and for this reason we decided to go for a walk through the city. After lunch we are going to be "productive" and continue working on our project. The visit at the Macmillan Cancer Center was very interesting and helped us a lot. A lot of the things which were spoken about refer directly to our project.

Friday

Today it was a really stressful but very interesting day. In the afternoon we visited 'Macmillan' which is a cancer support center. There we heard some really absorbing talks about this hospital and there we also got some useful information for our project. If you want more information please read our project which should be finished next friday.

a special day....

For someone in our group is today an exciting day....because Romina was born 21 years ago at 11:44 ... and so she could decide the whole day what we should do and where we should go to eat and so on....
Happy Birthday!!! .... don't drink to much :)

Speeches

Yesterday we've heard some very interesting speeches. As we told you, we've visited the "Western Community Hospital" and the people there were very friendly. We even got coffee and cookies! At first, Dr. David Payton, a GP, talked about the NHS in general, about the management, problems etc. He gave us a very good overview and could tell a lot from his experience.
After the nice coffee break, Sheila Brooke did a presentation about the NHS Walk - in Centers, which was very interesting and would be a good idea for Austria too. Walk - in Centers are open 7 days a week, from 7am until 10pm. They offer healthcare advice, information and treatment - no appointment necessary.
Before we went back "home", we heard a talk about the hospital, the wards and the rehabilitation beds. Afterwards we walked around the hospital and one of the nurses showed us a ward.
All in all it was a very interesting morning and we thank the staff at the "Western Community Hospital" for their hospitality!

Just that I've said it....

We just wanted to say that we really have the will to keep our blog up to date by posting daily. But we want to apologize in advance if we don't find the time or possibility to do so.

our shop

This is the shop where we go every day. It is open every day and during the week until 10 pm. The first time we were inside we could not close our mouth becaue we could not believe the big size of food grade packaging and the great selection of food. It's amazing!

Plans for the weekend?

Although I'm sitting right next to you I just wanted to ask you if we already have plans for the weekend. Maybe it refreshes our friendship if we use new forms of cummunication instead of always talking to each other...




Most likely it will result in the neverending battle between Culture (Isle of White) ...







...or shopping!

our home

This is the place where we live for the next two weeks. It's called the Kimber Halls of Residence.

A little bit of information about Southampton

A picture for everyone who doesn't have a clue where Southampton is.....

As you can see above Southampton has an huge harbour where famous ships like the Titanic run in. We're still hoping to see Leo DiCaprio somewhere, or even better: the diamond necklace!

Here's another version of the famous love story:

Lunch breaks

We enjoy the weather here in Southampton and spend our daily lunchbreaks in the park in front of the university. Here in England you have much more possibilities to get food, which is more or less healthy, for the lunch break very quick. The huge offer in the supermarkets is impressive! We also want a "Mark's & Spencer's"!

Solent University

A nice picture of our University! We enjoy the time we're spending at the University although we have to say that the coffee at the MCI is better :-)

Wednesday morning

Today we travelled to a hospital where we got a lot of information from people who work in the NHS about this system. Our opinion is that there are some useful things in this system which would be also good for the Austrian national health service.

Preview

What's going to happen tomorrow:

At 8:30 we're going to visit a hospital and we were told that 4 persons will give us information about their work.

To be continued...

"Landschulwochen"-Flash Back

The atmosphere in the students home of residence brings up bad memories of the hostels we stayed in during our activity week in our secondary schools. Romina even had a nightmare about teachers disciplining us for coming home too late!

Second University Day

Yesterday and today we learned something about the NHS (National Health Service) which was quite interessting because we could compare it to our health system in Austria. We were quite impressed because they offer some services like the NHS direct and the walk-in centers which are not common in Austria.

Also we heard two very informative speeches about housing in Great Britain especially in Southampton. Now we know that there are less than 10 homeless people which was quite an impressive and unbelievable figure for us (as we walked into the amazingly big ASDA today we saw one of the ten homeless people)

Today we had our first "Business English" lesson with Caroline. For us this subject seems to be quite useful because we learn something about communication rules and right behaviour in international business life.

First Impressions

Southampton is a very beautiful and charming city! Although the arrival day was quite stressful and exhausting we enjoyed our first day at the university. The accomodation in the hall of residence is also quite nice because it's near to the city and the university.
Our teachers seem to be very friendly and helpful and they also seem to take pity on us because of our hectic schedule. We also loved the library because of the wide selection of books and DVDs.

Shopping in England is also pretty more expensive than in Austria. That's why we decided to cook togehter in our kitchen, which is always great fun.

Welcome

Today we are throwing a "Welcome Party" for our brandnew blog!
This is the official kick off for our project " NPO Voluntary Organisations - how are NPO in Great Britain funded and managed".