Update on charity shop volunteering (4)

I still volunteer at the charity shop every Monday. I don't really do Fridays anymore, but a few times the day when I work there has been changed around, because either I'm busy, or another volunteer is.

This is what I've been doing at the shop lately:

- Tidying the bookshelf
- Cleaning up the carpet
- Tidying up the scarf and glove box
- Making the other boxes neater
- Making sure the umbrellas donated are not broken
- Tidying up the shelf by the shoe rack
- Arranging the shoes on the rack
- Putting clothes on hangers before they're priced
- Putting aside spare hangers on the rails
- Making sure clothes don't fall off the hangers
- Eating biscuits
- Drinking tea
- Getting things out of the windows for customers

Did I mention in an earlier post, that once I cleaned some metal containers with silver-cleaning fluid in the shop? It was very satisfying because I could see the stains coming out as I rubbed the items with the cloth.

I like working at the shop because I can always see the difference when I leave. And each time there is something different to do.

The retro shop

Around two weeks ago, my mother, sister and I went to a retro shop near Portabello market. I'd been once before, and bought a blue denim hat that time. Since then I'd been wanting to go back.

 The shop had more things than I'd remembered it to have. Downstairs there were rows of men's shirts, women's shirts, coats, skirts, trousers and shoes.

Most of the clothing in the shop was really bright and full of patterns:


 

 

After looking around downstairs for a bit, we went upstairs. Upstairs were more rows of clothing, but they also had jewelery, which was displayed in glass cases. There were also these two briefcases, which contained hats, scarves, gloves and handbags.



They were a bit messy, and some of the things were tangled up, but it was fun fishing around looking for things.

My mum bought a BEAUTIFUL vintage dress, and long, black, denim coat that reminds me of goths and punks.

That shop is AWESOME!!!

I would want to go back soon, but because we've just been, they'll probably have the same things as last time. Plus, I've been shopping lots recently, so I don't really need to do anymore soon.

Here are more photos from the shop:

The rain room

Like, a week or two ago, my mother, my sister and I went to this place called "The rain room". Now, what the rain room is, is a room with artificial rain falling from the ceiling. When I first heard about this, I thought, "But you can get rain outside anyway; why would you want to get wet inside? Well, the answer is: You don't want to wet inside, and you don't have to. The room is more special than just a large shower room, because when you want to walk, the rain stops to let you through. It doesn't stop all at once; it only stops right ahead of you. Also, you have to walk slowly, or the sensors won't stop the rain in time.

The rain room is at a place called "The Barbican", near "The museum of London". The queue to get in took about two hours, and we were supposed to only have five minutes in there! We took about eleven minutes in the room before we decided to go, though, to make it worth the wait.

Westfield (8th February 2013)

My dad had to go to work near "Westfield", so we decided that we'd go to "Westfield" and meet him when he'd finished work.

When we first got to "Westfield", we were greeted by the sight of a stall giving out free Nescafe coffee, in lots of different flavours. I didn't want to queue at first, because I thought it wouldn't be worth it for a small sample of coffee, but mum said that we should, so we queued. About half-way through the line, I realised that they weren't just letting you try tiny shots of coffee; each person got one cup. My sister and I decided we'd have hot chocolate (Which was the only drink they had that wasn't coffee), and my mum said she'd have a cappuccino. The man who was serving the drinks wasn't at all in a fluster; he made the drinks carefully, and told us about the different kinds of coffee, patiently while we were waiting. Mum and I both agreed that we'd be really stressed if there was a whole line of people waiting for drinks, and we had to constantly know who wanted what, which drink was which and which machine needed filling up.

Here's how I saw the staff making the drinks:

There were these little tubs, that looked a bit like a tiny version of a yoghurt pot, and inside them was a small quantity of concentrated coffee (Hot chocolate in my case). You told the staff which flavour you wanted, and they pushed the tub with that flavour, into a slot in one of the Nescafe machines. The machines had milk and water in them, which they dripped into the cup with the coffee/ hot chocolate, before spitting out the container that had held the concentrated coffee. The staff then mixed the liquid in the cups together, and handed them to customers.

We walked around with our drinks, and decided to go to a cosmetics shop called "LUSH", which is a shop my sister and I LOVE. We used the machines to direct ourselves there (Checking out "Neal's Yard" on our way), and then went into "LUSH" while my mum waited outside (She doesn't like the strong smells in the shop). While we were there, we were shown this bubble bath thing, which looks like a pink bathbomb in the shape of a butterfly, on a stick. You are meant to hold it by the stick under running water to make bubbles in the bath. It looked really cool.

Then, we were shown the perfumes (Which had different stories behind them) and the eye-shadow, which was AWESOME; you could use it as hair mascara as well, and it came in tons of different colours. I really wanted to get it, but it was about £14, and I didn't have that much on me. We usually go to the branch of "LUSH" in Covent Garden, so next time we go there I'll see if they have the hair mascara for a cheaper price. Maybe I'll just buy a bath bomb if they don't have it, or if it is still fourteen pounds.

After "LUSH", we went to a make-up shop called "INGLOT". Oh, it's beautiful! There are so many bottles of nail-polish arranged in colour order, so many. And there are lipsticks arranged in colour order too, and eye-shadow, and body pigments, and so many other things. I was really fascinated that there was blue lipstick, so my mum said, "Try it on", and a member of staff was nearby, so we asked her. She cleaned the lipstick, and let me try it on. She was really sweet, welcoming and helpful, and spent a while with my mum letting her try on everything while my mum decided what make-up she wanted to buy. There were some body pigments in another part of the shop, and I had fun putting them on my sister in crazy combinations, trying to make her look like one of the models in the "Dazed and Confused". Unfortunately, one of the staff said "Girls, can you stop playing with the make-up, please", in this really impatient, tired voice, like we were silly little kids. We were later told this was for hygiene reasons. Seriously? There were other people trying on make-up! They didn't get told off. And it's not like we were opening up new things; we were using the testers. I think that that member of staff had previously had lots of rowdy girls in the shop, trying on make-up and not buying anything. I think she didn't have (Or want to have) the intelligence to know that we weren't trouble-makers, and that our mum was a proper customer. If she was worried that we weren't going to buy anything, or that we would put other people off going into the shop, she could have told us. Also, the nice helpful woman who I wrote about earlier on in this paragraph didn't seem to mind us playing with the make-up one bit.

When we'd finished in "INGLOT", my mum said we should go to "ZARA". I tried on lots of things there, and in the end decided that I wanted a red dress; a pink belt; a purple hat and some grey leg-warmers. My mum bought me the leg-warmers, but I bought the others myself. We also saw a lovely creamy white dress, which we made my dad buy for me ;-).

After "ZARA", I checked out "Topshop". It's a really colourful, fun place, with bright jewellery. I think I want to go there again next time we go to "Westfield".

 Then, we met my dad and went to a sort of food-court, where we each ordered completely different meals, and sat down to eat.

We did visit a few more shops and do a few more things than what I've written about, but I've chosen to only talk about the things that are more interesting, or that I can remember better, or the places we spent more time at.

 

Making sushi

Yesterday, we decided it would be sushi day!

The rice was brown sushi rice, so it was more filling than usual rice. It did take longer to cook, though. My mother says that next time we should use white rice because it will be quicker to make.

When the rice had cooked, we added a mixture made out of rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt, making sure that it was cool before it was added. Mixing everything together was quite hard, because you had to get someone to fan the rice while you added the vinegar, salt and sugar. As well as that, the actual mixing part was different to how you'd imagine; to stop the rice from getting mashed, we had to sort cut and fold it over.

Here are the fillings we used:

1. Carrot

2. Cucumber (Cut into pretty shapes by my sister - even though you couldn't see it when it was rolled up inside the rice)

3. Salmon (Smoked)

4. Tuna mayonnaise

5. Sweet soya sauce

6. Mayonnaise

7. Chicken (Not very traditional!)

Sometimes we mixed the fillings, but other times, they were nice on their own.

Rolling the sushi was the hardest part, because I kept adding too much rice to the seaweed, and when I tried to roll it, it wouldn't close properly. My mother was way better at rolling the seaweed; she put just the right amount of fillings, and made it all fit it in nicely, and she did it quite quickly too.

We made miso soup using two sachets of instant miso soup, and some miso paste. Also, we chopped some onion and some leek and added that.

When everything was ready, we sat down together to enjoy the food we'd made!

That was the best meal I've had in ages!

I home-school; why don't people get it? Part 2

Here is another question people ask: Is it allowed?

Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh Doh.

Why would we do it if it wasn't? Really, why? And why would we tell people we did it if it wasn't allowed? I honestly can't believe that someone would think we'd do something like that.

And another question (I don't know whether I covered this in my other post): Does someone come to check on you to see if you're doing everything right?

The answer is: We've had someone come once, when they found out that my sister was home-schooled, because I started trying out school. But really, you can say if you don't want anyone to check on you, and they won't come. Also, you can just write to them if you want to talk about something, or meet in a coffee shop or somewhere else. Another thing: there is no definition of "Right". Different people have different methods of learning/teaching. Some people don't learn things "Normally"; they don't sit in front of a work-book writing down answers to maths questions, they might get a real time-table from a tube-station and work out the answers to questions their parents/carers/siblings/friends/cousins/whatevers give them, and then, maybe take that route to see if it works. Or maybe, they don't learn to read "At the normal age" because they don't want to/need to/other reason. Perhaps they learn things like "Route planning" or something that they're interested in, rather than have to do. You don't get taught "Route planning" in school, yet it's as necessary as maths or geography. Your teacher doesn't tell you, "Choose individually what to learn about - it can be anything you're interested in", but that is as valuable as anything else; in life, we should learn to make our own choices, not just follow other peoples decisions, and we shouldn't stop ourselves being interested in something just because we think it isn't academic enough.

There are so many other questions people ask about home-schooling, so many answers and so much writing about it to do, that I will spread it all out in future blog posts. Whenever I think of an idea to write about, to do with this topic, I'll post it on my blog.

But for now, I've got to get ready for the rest of the day (I haven't showered yet and it's nearly 1:40!!!), I have times tables to practice, drawing to do, and whatever else I choose to do today, so for now,

Byeeeeeeeeeee

Here are links to the rest of this:

Part 3
Part 1