#monkeyhaven

[crunchlins]

Day at @monkeyhaven! Love this place! Got Birthday cake for a monkey called Tonka's 12th birthday! #meercatmovies #meerkat #monkeyhaven

[forgetmenot-katka-blog]

Isle of Wight adventure

My partner and I, we are both trying to see as much interesting places in UK as possible. Every year we are visiting one special place and this years pick was Isle of Wight. We have heard a lot about this place, so we were really excited, a bit worried for ferry ride, but still pretty excited. UK is full of interesting places, hidden treasures and we love to explore and learn.

Before we went on our short trip, we needed to book some accomodation, which we are always doing with tripadvisor, we have great experiences with this app, so it is our big helper with planning our trips. Also, it’s full of reviews of different places and attractions in surrounding areas, which is very helpful too, so we did picked some of places, which we definitely wanted to see and some, which we would like to see, if we will have some time left.

From our experiences, we knew, what kind of accomodation were we looking for : a little house, bungalow or cottage with own kitchen and preferably little space outside,to have a morning cup of coffee :) We found one in town called Shanklin, which is situated on south east coast of isle.

When we had everything sorted, clothes packed we could set off for adventure. We picked ferry Lymington to Yarmouth, because it’s one of the shortest ones and also you have to drive through New Forest, which does have some lovely scenarios. Ferry experience was really nice, I was worried, but surprisingly, ferry rounds very very slowly, so whole journey was smooth and gentle, no bouncing at all.

After we arrived to Yarmouth, we didn’t have time to see any attractions, because it was already late afternoon, so we were just driving around, and taking the whole island atmosphere from the car :)

On our first day of adventure we decided to see an Osborne house, which is part of English Heritage. This place was once a holiday house for Queen Victoria and her family, and let me tell you, I want holiday house like this too, with my own beach and breathtaking garden, hmmm.

This place is truly magical, but also very popular, which means crowds and crowds of people. We are both a bit antisocial weirdos, so we prefer to visit places, which are not as busy as this one, but even so, we had a lovely time. We managed to spend few hours there, we saw the house and gardens and beach and swiss cottage too. They were nice, but when the hunger came, we had to leave and found some pizza place :) Yes, during the holiday time, healthy diet is not as important as in everyday life… I have to say, there are not many pizza places on whole isle, but we found one Pizza Express, which saved our lives.

After we had delicious pizza we found out something very very important, almost everything closes at 5pm, so we couldn’t do much more that day but headed off to our cottage and later in the evening had lovely walk on the beach, followed by minigolf (our holiday tradition).

Second day was reserved for animals, our destinations were Donkey sanctuary in Ventnor and monkey sanctuary called Monkey Haven in Newport.

First on list were donkeys, there is no entrance fee, but nothing can stop you from donating some cash to this cutiepies. My goal of the day was “to stroke a donkey”, but they were not interested in me at all, I was a bit disappointed, but then we met an older pony, called Bessy (I hope I’ve got the right name), she is a lady with no teeth, so she is on special diet, because she can’t chew, awwww. She was very friendly and opened to any cuddles and strokes, so we did spend some time with her. She is a star.

On our way to second destination of a day, we found shop called House of Chilli and we had to stop. My partner is a big chilli lover and there was no way to ignore this place. He picked some dried chillies for himself, I picked chilly oil, for cooking and we bought some chilly peanuts for fun, too. Eating this peanuts wasn’t funny at all, they were crazy!!!!! I managed to eat 2 of them.

Monkey haven was heartbreaking, but also a very nice experience at the same time. Thanks to lovely keepers, you can learn about some of the rescued monkeys, their life stories and history and it makes you wonder, how how how and why would some people treat the animals like that. We listened to some talks with Charlotte who assured us, that all the animals in sanctuary are getting the best what they can. We just want to say big thank you and well done to everyone, who is involved and who is helping the save something, what the others tried to destroy. Monkey sanctuary is also taking care of some owls and 6 meerkats, too.

Both donkey and monkey sanctuary are very positive and nice places to see, but also to support. Every creature on this planet deserves to live nice life on place, what is their own habitat, but not everyone is lucky to have that, those who are not, they need our help. It is sad,unfortunately some of them met a wrong people :(

After spending a day surrounded with animals, we just went on beach again and had nice evening, followed by watching Naruto in bed.

Our last day in isle, was opened for any adventure, we didn’t have anything planed, all what we wanted was to visit something close to Yarmouth, because we needed to catch a ferry home in the evening. So we searched area and found a place called The Needles. We didn’t know properly, what it was, but wanted to checked it out anyway. And what a surprise!!! We were driving by west coast of isle and that was the moment, when we realised, what a mistake did we make, by booking accommodation on the other side. This place is so amazing, deserted and beautiful, just perfect for us. We know now, that next time visiting the isle, west coast is our place to stay. Road was amazing, we could see the ocean and cliffs, absolutely stunning place.

The Needles was lovely place too, after arriving you have to pay for parking, which was £5 a day, we paid £4, I don’t know why, but maybe, because we are National Trust members??? Who knows.

The lover lever of this place does have nice view, but it is full of attractions, mostly for kids, so we headed off to the higher level, where you can walk (around 20 minutes), or there is a option to take a bus, which was £2.50 if I remember it correctly.

Weather was lovely, so we decided to walk, and also we had all this treats and unhealthy food, so some extra exercising was necessary. We did make the right choice, walk was nice, lovely countryside and view. On the end of footpath we found place called The Old battery, which is historical military place, situated on the cliff. Battery is part of National Trust, which saved us some money for entrance fee :) This place was very peaceful (which is strange, because it wasn’t few years ago, when they were working with gunpowder over there). Not very busy, with lovely tea room, surrounded with ocean and great view,... This is what we like. We did take (I did) lots of pictures, but because somebody (me) forgot to pack a charger for camera, we do have just a lover quality photos taken by phone :(

After a while we become hungry again and we had some spare time, so we went to find a place to eat.

Belated lunch was the end of our little adventure, which over all was lovely experience. We had nice time together, we were blessed with sunny days, we saw everything what we wanted and now after collecting all the memories, we have to get use to normal life again. We can tick off Isle of Wight of our list and start thinking, what will be our next adventure. We are deciding between Scotland, Wales and Lake District, who knows, we will see what feature is holding for us.

[inter-group-14-2017-2018]

Week 1 - 20.10.17

Today is the announcement of the groups and the clients they would be assigned. The lecture began with Rod explaining that the contact with the client has to be professional and frequent as we’re representing the University of Portsmouth. Then they swiftly got on with the group call outs, ours was called out as Troy Wells, James Hammond, Amani Demiati and Harry Wilson. This is positive start for the group as they already knew at least one person within the group, so they didn’t have to spend to long understanding the strengths and skills of each member. 

The client they were assigned is Jerome Michelleta, who is a psychology lecturer at the university. The brief involves producing content for interactive touch screen educational displays for Monkey Haven in the Isle of Wight. As we have 3 Digital Media students in the group, we were excited by the brief and enthusiastic to get started because we’ve done similar projects before, we couldn’t have got a better suited project. We were made aware that this is the second time the client had worked with the university, therefore we’ve already got expectations to live up to.

The group have decided to use Facebook messenger as their main mode of contact, and are arranging weekly meet ups. As well as this Troy has emailed Jerome for an initial meeting between client and group.

Initial meeting overview

What the group aimed to achieve:

Receiving and understanding the brief

Carrying out initial contact with the client

Understanding individual skill-sets

Distributing potential roles

What the group achieved:

Skills between individual group members and preferable roles within the group were discussed

Brief received but not fully understood 

Contact with the client was made via email, and a meeting was arranged

Whole group assigned roles, with a Project Manager

Summary/what they learnt:

The point of this first week was to find out groups and get an understanding of individual skill-sets and what each member would be comfortable doing within the project. The initial reaction from the group was excited but nervous for the project ahead as the brief was not fully clear. With instant contact with the client and assigned roles, they were confident that they were off to a good start.

-TW