Grocery shopping in Finnish!

So, this Friday Sari (my host mom) gave me a task: get some food at the store. Well, that sounds easy enough, but it was not! First of all, the next grocery store is in Veikkola (about 6 km away), so I had to take the car. And although the Beetle is kinda cool, it is really hard to drive and I still don't feel very safe with it. Driving it makes me blood pressure go up high! :-P And then there is the language: most words in Finnish are so different that you can't even guess what it might be (unlike in English or Spanish). So, my shopping list was in two languages: English and Finnish (e.g. cucumber = kurkku). That one is actually easy because in German it's "Gurke". But how about that one: beef = nauta? No guessing there. Well, I got into the car. The engine was really grumpy and when the sign said 80 km/h, I barely made it up to 65 km/h. (But going 80 km/h in the Beetle makes you feel like you are going 180 km/h and you have the feeling that it will fall apart any minute.) I made it to the store in one piece and fortunately, there were a lot of free parking spaces. If there hadn't been, I would have returned at once! *lol* Then I went into the store: The vegetables could be found easy enough. But then there was the meat. I know that Sari hates pork. But when I was in front of the shelf for minced meat, it didn't say "nauta" on it anywhere. The inscriptions on the packages had lots of variations, but just "nauta" could not be found. After considering my options for 5 minutes, I decided to go with "naudan jauheliha" and prayed that it wasn't a mix of pork and beef. The last stop was at the juice aisle: Fortunately, the packages had nice pictures on it and I didn't have to guess. Here is what I think: minced beef should have a picture of a cow on it, so that the poor au pairs in Finland who don't speak any Finnish can find the food easier. And I know I'm not the only au pair here that doesn't speak the language. But there is one advantage to not speaking the language: When the boys argue I just yell "Stop!" at both of them and most of the time it even works and I don't have to listen to their weird explanations why Valtteri was unfair to Arttu or vice versa! :-P But the disadvantage is that I can't hear their funny stories kids usually make up in their mind! :-/

PS. Naudan jauheliha was exactly the right kind of meat to get. It only means minced beef! :-)