Back in Austria!

First of all, we want to apologize for our little delay - but the last three days were very stressful.

Last Friday was our big day – it was “show time”. Well-prepared we went to the solent university and gave our 20-minute-long presentation. All in all, I think, we can be really satisfied and proud of what we have done the last two weeks. To be honest, it’s not always easy to stick to the time-frame, to mange a weblog, a writing assignment and to prepare a presentation at the same time. But … we have done it!

After all presentations, Carolyn took us to a little town, called Hythe, where we went into a pub to have some drinks and dinner. We used this opportunity to reflect the last two weeks and enjoyed the nice atmosphere. Back in Southampton at about 8.30 p.m. we went into town, to have some drinks in many different pubs and clubs. All in all this exhausting evening was a nice ending for two great weeks.

Saturday morning we had to leave our students’ residence at 10 a.m. in the morning. You can imagine that many of us weren’t really fit, but that’s another story …
Well, so we went to the coach station where we took the bus to London Healthrow and there the bus to London Stansted. So we arrived at Stansted airport at 14.30 p.m. Hannes, Helene and me, we took the flight to Salzburg; Kathi had to go to Bratislava. So we split up after the check-in and the security check. Although we had a lot of problems coming back to Austria (Kathi’s flight was delayed about 1 ½ hour and the buffer-bar of my car was stolen when we arrived in Salzburg, so we had to go to the police!) we are now glade to be safe back in Austria.





We all will relax the next week to be full of energy to start into the next semester at the MCI on Monday.

Last but not least, we want to thank Carolyn for two well-organised weeks and want to wish her a wonderful time with her little boy.
Cheers!
Bye,
Evelyn, Hannes, Helene and Kathi

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!!! :-)

Visit at Brendoncare Knightwood Care Home

Finally we had our excursion to the elderly care home today. We were looking forward to finish our collection of information about this specific topic. Furthermore, we did a lot of research and prepared some questions. However, we went there with high expectations and were very excited about this luxurious and very expensive care home, which has just opened in August 2006. The Centre Manager of the Brendoncare Knightwood Care Home, Jane Bell, guided us through the house and showed us an apartment, a bungalow, the care homes facilities like restaurant, library, common room, sundeck, hairdresser, shop, etc. After a question and answer session with Jane Bell in the library we had all information to finish our working paper.

Austrian afternoon!

In the morning we heard a presentation by Julia Barton, the head of Learning and Development of the NHS Trust in Portsmouth Hospital. She talked about Health Care Management in England and gave us helpful information for our project.
After the lunch break our team supported the group of St. John Ambulance, who organised an Austrian afternoon for fourteen elderly people. First of all, they introduced our home country to the retired people, prepared a quiz and did handicrafts with them. We think this afternoon was a real success and young & old had their fun.
During we were waiting for the beginning of this event, we went to the library to inform us about some useful books. Now we are still sitting in front of the laptop preparing our working paper and presentation. No time to go out! ;-(

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!

Enjoyable day in Bournemouth!!!!

Although we decided to travel to Bournemouth today, we woke up a little bit later this morning – maybe because of the long night yesterday. Nevertheless we left Southampton at about 12.30 a.m. It didn’t take us a long time to go there (only 40 min by bus) and towards all expectations it wasn’t very expensive. First of all we went down to the Sea where we found a wonderful long sandy beach. We all put our big toe into the water and decided not to go in. Besides that it was very windy. We walked along the beach where we enjoyed the fantastic view and drank the most disgusting coffee we have ever had. England doesn’t have a “coffee-culture”!!!!!!! Furthermore we went into the centre of Bournemouth where we recognised differences between Bournemouth and Southampton. Bournemouth looks much nicer and cleaner. Moreover there are much more pubs and all in all we had a better feeling than in Southampton. Finally it was a good decision to visit Bournemouth; we all enjoyed the day and had a lot of fun!

Sunset in England

Yesterday we hadn't enough time for sharing our experiences with bloggistan because we had a very busy day – sorry.

In the morning we started with “Applied Language Tasks”. It was the last time that Trish taught us – she is now travelling to India. In this lesson we had to simulate an interview. The BBC team of 4 students asked question to young people who experienced a gap year.

Afterwards we had to think about management styles as well as its problems and solutions therefore.



In the afternoon we visited the “Macmillan Cancer Care” in Portsmouth. It was one of the most interesting organisations we have seen in this week so far. The management team there was very kind and answered every open question. The atmosphere seemed to be very relaxing and we are convinced that this institution can give patients helpful support to cope with their disease.

After returning home from our excursion we went down to the harbour to enjoy the marvellous sunset. We were quiet late but maybe we can see it again on another day the following week.

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.

First excursion in class

Early in the morning we went to the Western Community Hospital. It was a real interesting morning and we got a lot of information about the PCT (Primary Care Trust) and the two "Walk in Centres" of Southampton. These are centres where trained and experienced nurses treat people with minor illnesses and injuries 7 days a week, 365 days a year from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Especially the "Walk in Centres" were something that we hadn't heard before. It seems to be a good idea and it should also be tested in Austria. After the presentations we have visited the Community Hospital itself which is a centre for rehabilitation.
In the afternoon we had Business English in which we learned typical characteristics of managers. Afterwards we went home to prepare healthy Austrian dishes like "Kartoffelgulasch" and "G'schnetzlt's" - fantastic!
Now we are going to research a little bit for our project about the elderly care in Southampton.
See you tomorrow.

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!

First day at Southampton Solent University!

On Monday we got to know our course manager Carolyn, who explained and showed us the most important things we need to know during the next 2 weeks. As we have expected the students were split into teams of four and were confronted with a project. Hannes, Helene, Kathi and me, we are working together on a project concerning elderly care homes in Britain. We have to analyse the provision and availability of elderly care with an emphasis on the Brendoncare Knightwood Care Home, which we will visit next Wednesday. After the "introduction and welcome" session we had different kind of English classes till 5 p.m. Afterwards Carolyn took us to a little "sightseeing tour", where we were looking for ingredients to create our own dinner (because to be honest, English food is not that we are used to in Austria). In the evening we decided to go out because after we had seen our tough time schedule for this week we thought that we maybe won't have time to enjoy our spare time in the next days.

Arrival in Southampton!

After having a short flight of about 2 hours and a long trip from London Stansted to Southampton we arrived at our student residence late on Sunday evening. Although it was nearly 11 p.m. we went out for a small dinner and a drink. It was a really long day and everybody was glad to have a bed.