Grocery shopping when you don't know the language

So we admittedly don't know Swedish.  I know thank you (tack), please (snälla), and nice to meet you (trevligt att träffas) and I can count to 20.  Not surprisingly, none of these things will really help you navigate a grocery store.  The Swedish language is sometimes similar to English, or you can derive the English word by loosely translating and looking at the object sideways.  For example, aprikös, are apricots.  The picture may look like peaches, but you would be wrong.  Thoooose are apricots.

On our first day here, we were determined to navigate a grocery store.  We found one that was basically underground (we would later discover that we have 3 grocery stores within a 5 minute walk of our house).  It had pram ramps so we could take our stroller down easily (very nice).  We were quickly overwhelmed as there were tons of people swarming the store.  The next day we discovered two things.  1) Everyone gets paid on the 25th of each month, so a lot of shopping happens and 2) This particular store is the cheapest grocery store in the area.   Jon went off to find breakfast items and I stumbled blindly in the cheese section. Yes, there is an entire section on cheese.  Not a cooler near the cold cuts.  Three full refrigerated walls of any type of cheese you could imagine in 4 different shapes and sizes.  Wedges, wheels, slices, shredded -- it was a cheesy heaven!

Jon came back out of breath -- not a good sign -- and threw some chocolate muffins and milk in the cart.  We walked past the meat section and realized that in order to find out how much things actually cost, we would need to translate the per kg into per lb and then the currency from SEK to USD.  Doing one conversion in your head is easy -- doing 2 simultaneously is not.  Trying to figure out the cost of milk per gallon when what you have in your hands is 1.5 L is not easy.

When we left the grocery store, we had successfully bought a random smattering of items -- olive oil, chocolate muffins, lactose free milk (Jon thought it was skim), eggs, pasta, and red sauce.

On Saturday, we entered the grocery store with more confidence -- another mistake.  Jon had spoken with some people at work who recommended another (more popular) grocery store.  We walked in with a list of items to get confident we would get them all.  When we entered, it was pure chaos.  People were everywhere rushing about stuffing items in their bags - no room for carts!  I stood to the side while Jon went to figure out the meat/fish section.  He was looking for fish or mussels, hot chocolate mix and cookies.  That's all we wanted!  He came back, again out of breath, with prepared pasta and sausage.  We got out of there unscathed but I think Jon was shell shocked.  "The guy wouldn't look at me unless I had a number, which I didn't.  I had a question! Samples of ribs were being given out so it was a mob rush!"

On this shopping trip, we bought OJ thinking it was apple juice - which is understandable based on the picture below.  This was a prime example of us translating too loosely between Swedish and English.

We desperately need to learn Swedish so I can read the backs of all of these cartons.  I have no idea if I'm feeding Calvin pure sugar (I probably am) or if there are any nutrients listed at all.  All of the caloric information is in kcals and grams so I have no concept for how fattening (or not) these things are.  Grocery shopping is clearly still stressful as Jon looks crazy-eyed every time he comes back from an errand.  I imagine it will get better as we learn what everything means.