It's raining - typical English weather!

In the morning it was the first time that the rain woke us up!
So, all of us were in a bad mood, went with the umbrella and raining coat to the university to meet Sue James, a social worker at 9.30 a.m. She answered all our burning questions concerning the general situation of elderly in the UK. We were surprised that only 6 of the 69 care homes in Southampton are managed by the local council. Moreover, she mentioned that the quality of standards in public care homes is excellent because of regularly internal as well as external inspections. Furthermore, Sue gave us an information-package with a lot of brochures.

We have just finished our writing assignment and now we are working on our power point presentation. Afterwards we are going to celebrate Sarah’s birthday in the pub Square, where the cocktails are very cheap! Cheers!!! :-)

National Trust and Salisbury

In the morning we went by bus to one of the properties (Phillipps House) of the National Trust near Salisbury. There we got a tour through the house and heard a lot about the history of this fantastic old building. To enjoy the warm weather we had our coffee break in the garden where Helene got to know a specific kind of English wasps.
After a short introduction of the National Trust by the responsible area manager, we went by bus back to Salisbury city.




Some of us decided to visit the famous Stonehenge, the others enjoyed the afternoon by doing a sightseeing tour through the city of Salisbury. Due to Kevin’s guided tour in the bus we were curious about Great Britain’s tallest cathedral – it was really impressive.



Because we had such a relaxed weekend, we have to work hard on our project this evening.

Isle of Wight

Traditional English breakfast – one thing we haven’t had so far! It was great and it’s the right thing to start into an adventurous day on the “Isle of Wight”.
We went by ferry to the north coast of the island where our journey started. Besides Newport and the Compton Bay we also visited the “Needles” which were a highlight of the tour. All in all, the whole landscape itself was beautiful and the cliffs were impressive and frightening at the same time!
We all had a fantastic day and returned back to Southampton with a sunburn – but see for yourself and have fun with the pictures we took!

Sunny Thursday!

Today we had different classes in the morning. In these lessons we have learnt presentation techniques as well as citing references which we will need for writing our assignment. Our lunch break we enjoyed in one of the numerous nice parks of Southampton. Afterwards Mr. Biddle from the City Council (Directorate of Care, Health and Communities) spoke about history, services, projects and frameworks of the health system in Southampton.

Problems with our Blog

Our Weblog colapsed and a lot of things were deleated or got lost. Now we have repaired it and set it up new. Our Blog is running again and online to inform you about the latest news and whats going on here.

2nd Day in the UK

Today we started with an English class followed by two interesting presentations about "Housing" in Britain. We were really surprised that there are not more than 10 people in Southampten who sleep "rough" at night. It seemed us less than in Innsbruck.

After a short lunch break Evelyn, Helene, Hannes and I had the possibility to go to an "open day" in an Elderly Care Home named Challoner house. It is about 25 min away from Southampton. We expected to get a good view into the treatment, management and living of elderly people in the UK which is necessary for our project. Well, so we went there by a traditional English bus, which was a new and interesting experience for all of us, especially for Evelyn. Challoner house is a private care home which covers about 50 people who are old and can't take care for themselves or are terminally ill. All in all, we were very depressed and dissatisfied when we left the care home after 15 minutes. The general manager was a little bit impolite, busy and didn't want to answer any question we had prepared before.

Back in Southampton we had our dinner and worked on our weblog for more than two hours!!!

Tomorrow we will visit the Western Community Hospital and start to do our research on the internet. Time is running!