our new apartment

I’ve never been so happy to have such a tiny dorm room with no dishwasher, no living room, and no furniture. The day started out pretty solid when we took a walk to the river and spent some time contemplating what life would be like in the snow. But when we went to the leasing office and they told us that the keys were ready to our flat, well that just put it over the top. Although in our last few days in this hotel, I’ve become quite fond of it, I am ready to get to a space where we can actually walk around. A place where our six bags do not take up the entirety of the room. So that afternoon my Finnish friend, who has been a life saver, loaded up our bags in her car to take to the apartment. After two trips from the hotel and six trips up the stairs to the fourth floor, we were sweating and out of breath, but we were home. We surveyed the place and decided that it definitely felt bigger than 540 sq ft. Hurray!! It is definitely a worn dorm room, but other than that, it’s pretty nice. We walked to the super market down the street from our place to gets some essentials and cleaning supplies to make it feel just a little bit more like home.

The super market. Well that’s another story. It seems like every time we have interaction with another human being these days we’re doing something ridiculous and embarrassing. First of all, the walk to the super market is awesome. It’s basically a walk through the forest with super tall trees surrounding you. (Talk to me again when I have to make this walk in the snow). So the actual shopping experience was pretty normal. We gathered everything we needed, making an educated guess on some things since the labels were in Finnish, and went to check out. It started off just like you would think any checking out experience would (minus the fact that she greeted me with “Hyva”, but I mummbled something back so it was all good). As she is scanning all of our items she puts them on the conveyer belt and they slide down to the end…where no one is bagging them. First I’m thinking “ok, that’s fine, I’m sure we just grab some bags over here and do it ourselves”. So I look around for said bags and there are none. I ask Scott where the bags are and he has no idea. I’m looking around at the other people checking out to see what they are doing, but I can’t get a good look. Plus, by this point all of our items are at the end of the conveyer belt, unbagged and there is a line forming behind us. Scott wants us to just grab everything in our hands and carry all 30 items the 5 minute walk home. That really didn’t sound fun to me so I decide to ask the cashier. I started off by asking her IN FINNISH if she speaks English. Success! She does. Then I was like, “Um…so….bagsss??”. She laughed and pointed to the front of the check out line where they kept all the bags. As we are rapidly bagging everything, so the next person in line could start, we felt relief that the next time we go to the super market we’re going to look like locals.

The next day: Back at the super market, looking like pros…however, turns out that we stole (accidentally) like 7 bags. Apparently you are supposed to pay for those. Next time we’ll get it right, I know it.