Oxfam

After class today, Lael and I felt motivated to begin volunteering. Everyone in the Study Abroad group is required to have at least 20 volunteer service hours by the end of the semester. We decided to volunteer at Oxfam, a second-hand clothing and book store that is a big supporter of fair trade. There is a chain of Oxfam stores around Europe, and as I'm learning more about fair trade, I love supporting it (www.oxfam.org.uk)! Anyway, so we arrived at Oxfam around 3:00 pm. The manager's name is Janet, and she was so nice to us right away! She said they could definitely use us, and she actually wanted us to work starting that minute, haha. We had class later, so we weren't able to, but we told her we'd start coming on Tuesdays, starting tomorrow!



For dinner, Sarah, Jennifer and I went to McDonald's! At the beginning of the semester, I told myself I would never eat at McDonald's in Oxford....but here I found myself taking part in this "uncultural" experience, haha. At least I didn't order a hamburger; I settled for a barbecue chicken sandwich instead. :)



After dinner, the three of us stopped by Sainsbury's (our local grocery store) to get food for the rest of the week. I realized I didn't have much "dinner" food at all - I've been eating mostly cereal and sandwiches! Haha, typical poor college student meals. So Sarah and Jennifer helped me with meal-planning: I got pizza, pasta, soup, etc. They couldn't believe I've been living without this stuff for so long!