Culture Shock

Yesterday was a holiday where the Finns burn their Christmas trees to end the Christmas season, so everything was closed and we were kinda of stuck in our apartments all day. However, we went to my roommates tutors apartment (we are all assigned tutors to help us get around) in the evening and she made us a finnish pie and taught us certain things to do/say or not to do/say. Since stores were closed and my roommate and I couldn't figure out how to use our stove, we hadn't aten anything all day except for an apple. That night we all slept for about 3 hours because of jet lag.
Today was interesting and it started with me getting locked in my bedroom (the doors here are tricky and they lock you in and out when you close them) and our smoke detector went off three times because of making toast. Finally, it was about zero degrees and we had a 30 minute walk to campus at 9:00am. Today was our first day of orientation and we got to meet the other 100 or so exchange students. There are only 2 other American girls here. For lunch we had fish fingers, salad, bread, rice and a potato with homemade beer and sour milk (sweet milk). After orientation we went to the city center to buy some things we needed. There are lots of shops but everything is in finnish, which I've determined will be almost impossible to learn. Before going back to the apartment, we went back to the grocery store. I almost feel dysfunctional in the grocery stores because we have no idea what we are buying and have to ask our tutor about everything! In Finland, the bags for groceries must be paid for. Well, as soon as we started putting our groceries into plastic bags a cashier started yelling at us in finnish. When we told her we didn't understand her she started yelling louder. My roommate's tutor came to help and once we got everything figured out, the cashier started mocking us to the other customers waiting in line...embarassing. Needless to say, I'm afraid to go back to the grocery store. We took our first bus ride back to our apartments, which also turned into a difficult task when the driver got angry because we handed our money to him instead of putting it onto the little tray in front of him.
There are a lot of small things in the Finnish culture that are different from the American culture that we don't notice until we have already done it wrong. For example, pointing is something never to do, there is no tax on anything and you do not tip anyone. A few other different things, the elevators look like doors to a refridgerator that you have to open and once you get to the floor you have to push the doors open. We learned this after standing in the elevator at our floor for 5 mins trying to figure out how to open it. Simularly, the toilets are flushed by pulling a nob up on the top of the toilet. It took me about 3 mins to figure out how to flush the toilet the first time I went. haha. And all of the building smell the same on the inside, but its a funky kind of smell. Finally, the US is one of the only countries not on the metric system, which makes my life a whole lot more difficult. This morning, everyone was saying that it was -20 degrees outside, in which case I thought that I needed to put about 5 layers on before even thinking about stepping outside. Well, everyone was talking -20 C not -20 F. And, everyone looks at me like I'm crazy when I ask how many miles 1 kilometer is or what the temperature would be in Farhenheit. So, I made myself a little cheat sheet with all the converstions to carry with me.

This is all for now. I hope it makes sense, I typed it very fast! Pictures will come soon!
:)