i just had my dinner (chicken & vegetable soup), and found out that this house is emptying one student at a time. today two students left, tomorrow another leaves, and that just leaves me and another guy who lives upstairs. my friend, fred, is on vacation so he doesn't count, although he's a permanent resident of this house. so there's all these food packages, sauces, drinks, etc... in the kitchen (and they've been there since i moved in), and i found out tonight that they belong to the previous exchange students who lived in this house (they don't belong to any of the people i live with now). so when we were going over our cleaning strategy (as we have to have the house cleaned by the time we move out), i asked Chris (another university of st. gallen student who's leaving tomorrow for Geneva) who all these foods belong to, and that's when he said they belonged to the previous exchange students that never cleaned it up. i asked what he's going to do with it (since he's in charge of putting it all away and i'm in charge of cleaning the stove and countertop) and he said he's going to throw it all away. WOAH! stop right there! i'm talking about closed, packaged, new food items, like packaged cake mix, for example, or packaged Uncle Ben's rice, or bottled oil (brand new), or bottled balsamic vinegar, ground and whole coffee beans, packaged penne and farfalle pastas, salt, spices, herbs, canned tuna, canned corn, etc, etc, etc... all new. would i be so unkind to the starving children around the world as to allow Chris to throw all this stuff away. HELL NO! my friends, i'm glad to report to you now that i am the proud new owner of all this food crap that i probably won't use but am nevertheless extremely excited to own. i feel like i just went shopping. FOR FREE! aahhhh, it does feel good. the only thing now is that i have to figure out how to find a bag big enough to fit all this stuff in. ah, well, it'll come to me. this'll be good for my new home, with all new housemates; they can make brownies now and have some Uncle Ben's rice and pasta, and what not. it's a waste to put food to waste, my friends!