Thank you very much for everything !

We had a great time!!

14th September 2006

The last days in Southampton...

First of all:

Happy Birthday Sarah!!!! - We love you!!

It is Thursday and you can imagine that the teams are getting nervous because of the presenation tomorrow. - final spurt!!!

Our assignment is almost ready, neavertheless we went in the morning to another child care organisation, namely the "CIS - Children´s information center" where we get additional information and some prospects and gifts for our presentation.

The organisation isn´t far away from our university so we walked back and had one and a half hour language course with Cayrolyn.

We had a discussion in teams about management solutions for a company and read an interesting text about habits and stereotypes in different countries.

Furthermore Carolyn pointed out some mistakes from out blog and gave us more information about our nice farewell trip tomorrow night.

There was only one problem: We did to much work on our assignment and have to delete about 1000 words! - Calm down - stay cool little, lovely team!

In the afternoon Kerstin and Verena G. abbreviated the text and Verena E. and I finished the power point presentation.

At about 9 o´clock we mail our work to Carolyn! - What a feeling!

Afterwards we allocated the parts of the presenation and learned it for tomorrow.

Good luck and sleep well everybody!!!!

Wednesday 13th September 2006

Our day started at 9 a.m. with two grammar lessons with Rebecca. We made excersises practising the correct use of linking words to improve our Academic English.

After a short break we did a group work together with Carolyn. We had to put ourselves into the role of a British housing association and had to allocate some available housing offers to different clients on the basis of their income and actual housing situations.

This group work led us to a quite interesting discussion about unemployment benefits in the UK and about the lack of the British Social Welfare System.

At noon we had a one hour lunch time break and afterwards we were working for 2 and a half hours on our project and presentation. Our group could get ahead very far in this self-directed working time :))

At 3:15 p.m we had another two lessons with Kevin, where we reflected the yesterday's presentation about "Healthcare Management in England: An active care perspective". We discussed what we could learn (as future nonprofit managers) from the guidlines and principles of the National Health System.

In the evening we had some supper, continued with our work on the project and plaed a bit "Latinisch Watt'n " :))

Dear Diary, ;- )

Today was definitely one of the hardest, but also one of the most interesting days our our stay! Maybe it was one of the hardest days because of our yesterday's night session, where we - of couse - worked on our project ;-)

In the morning we had an informative presentation about Portsmouth National Health Service Trust by Julia Barton, who is the Head of the Learning and Development Association. There we had to opportunity to ask all our remaining questions concerning the NHS.

Afterwards we had to hurry up to get our bus to Warren Centre, that departed only 15 minutes after our lesson.

There we got a tight agenda. After welcoming us friendly, we got a brief overview about the organisation. Subsequently Mrs. Kim Wills and Marilyn Laurie, both Social Workers from the Children’s Assessment Team, presented us their organisation - focusing on business, legislation and processes.

Then we had our well- earned tea and coffee break. In this place we want to mention that we all like the Brtish tradition of the “Tea Time”, very much. Maybe we should introduce this tradition also at home…

After our refreshment, we did a role play with some social worker, whose names I don’t remember exactly. Through this play got to know the work of social workers; they have an important role as coordinators in a network of various people and organisations.

Then Mrs. Di Ferry told us how the processes of an adoption work together in the UK. This was quite interesting, because we noticed some differences to the system in Austria. Moreover, we had a discussion about abortion and pregnancies. I have to say, that this presentation was the most interesting one for me on this day.

Because of our lively discussion we were out of time. Consequently, Mr. John Pike and his colleague had to do their presentation about the "Leaving Care Team" in five minutes instead of in half an hour.
Thus, unfortunately we didn´t have enough time to ask them some questions.

But all in all, the presentations were quite interesting. Now we will continue to do our project and hopefully not as long as yesterday.
However, Friday is coming soon, so we have to work hard to make some progress..

In the enclosed pictures you can see our role play at the Warren Centre!

Monday, 11th September

In the morning the whole group made a trip to Philips House, which is located near Salisbury, to learn more about the National Trust. We enjoyed the beautiful landscape, where the house was located and got to know interesting details about its history and the role of the National Trust (and Kevin, who accompanied our trip today, explained us what a "Haha" is).

Once again I want to mention, that the surrunding there was just awesome! Photos will come soon so that you can see for yourself. At this place I also want to thank Vicky, for taking the time every day to put the photos on our blog.

In the afternoon we had the possibility to see more of Salisbury, a beautiful town, or could to visit Stonehenge.

In the evening we continued to work on our project, namely to do research on the Internet about the different facilities for childcare in Southampton.

9/10 th September 2006

At the weekend we decided that after this week we had hard-earned a relaxing day with shopping and see some interesting towns and sights near southampton.

In the morning we Verena, Christina,Franziska, Theresia and I were in Lymington, where we visited a market. It is a really lovely town with nice houses and churches. We dawdled through the market and went shopping.

After Lymington we went by train to Bournemouth, which is known for its seven miles of golden beaches and beautiful parks and gardens. We enjoyed the beach and the beautiful area around us. We relaxed and went eating in the restaurant "White Beach". Afterwards we had new energy to go shopping. :-)

As the evening came, our money was gone. So we had to go home, where our project work was waiting for us...

Photos are coming soon! ;-)

The same Friday - night

Nightlife in Southampton? - we wanted to try it and went downtown, where we found a nice pub - very soon they knew us as the Austrian girls (and two poor boys). Almost the whole class was there and we had a lot of fun...

Nightlife? - Yes, but the most pubs are closing at midnight...so some of us joined a private party in the kitchen at home and the rest of the group went to Las Margaritas, a nice dancing club ,where our finn class mate, namely Inka demonstrated her Hip Hop-dancing skills - well done, INKA!

If we look back on this week, we have to say, that it was an eventful week with a lot of new impressions. Furthermore, we recognised that we are quite a good team that works togehter very well.. -

Therefore, thank you to all team member! I hope that we also will have fun in the following week!

Friday 08th September 2006

Today we started your lesson at 9:00 a.m with Trish Hansen in the first floor of the Herbert Collins Building. It was our last session with Trish because she will go to India next week for teaching English there.

We read an interesting text about making volunteer/social work abroad with her. The focus of our discussion laid on the issue why students are going abroad in their gap year. Do they want to boost their CVs or do they just want to have a good time or are they really interested in helping people of developing countries? Is it not just feckless hedonism or misplaced idealism?

According to this we read several articles from voluteers, who worked abroad in different social projects. Afterwards we did quite a funny role play, where some of us were journalists, who interviewed volunteers concerning with this topic. It was quite an interesting and controversal discussion.

In our second lesson - Business English with Carolyn - we did some grammatic exercises and a lisening comprehension about different management styles.

After lunch we went with Michael H. to Millbrook, visiting Sure Start, a social facility for child care. There we joint a presentation from Scott Hickmann. There we got several information which we could use for our project.

Now, it is 07:00 p.m. and we are going to work on our project.

See you!