Getting into the swing of things.

Thought I'd make a quick post while waiting for my laundry to dry.  I've moved into my own student apartment and decked it out with stuff from secondhand shops, Ikea, and Prisma (the Finnish version of Target).  I also went food shopping, and at the market square I bought a whole kilogram of green grapes for just one euro.  Good prices aren't too hard to find here if you know where to look!  Having no income means that rather than just buying what's in front of me, as I did in the States more often then not, I'm a lot more motivated to search out other options to find a good deal - it's refreshing to be a resourceful shopper again, and also find the occasional treasure at the secondhand shops!  If you limit your shopping to department stores such as Clas Ohlson, Anttila or Stockmann, then yes, the cost of living is quite high here.  In the Clas Ohlson catalog, my $10 electric toothbrush I had in the US costs 25€ here.  Electronics are especially pricey and I'm not even going to go into the price tags of American clothes and shoes over here.  But at a student flea market, I bought a pair of curtains, a towel, and a can opener for 1,20€.  Resourcefulness... that is the key to reasonable living around here!

Laundry should be ready soon, which was a learning experience in itself.  As soon as I thought I was getting along pretty well with figuring things out around here, I went into the laundry room and was confronted with completely unfamiliar symbols on the washing machines and an array of new drying options.  In the States, of course, we simply throw things in the dryer and let that take care of the job.  But here you have a regular drum dryer, a drying cabinet which consists of some horizontal poles that swing out of a closet-sized appliance and circulates dry air inside, an actual drying room with a clothesline and a timer for warm dry air for the entire room, and some odd pressing machines that were completely obscure and foreign to me.  I'm about to discover whether my assumptions of how these things all worked were successful, or if I'll have to buy some new clothes in the near future...