Locating milk before its expiration date

Rachel and I live near a grocery store, and when I first got here, I had no idea what to expect the grocery store to carry and was too tired to venture out. I quickly learned that it carries almost anything you would like, but the issue is you have to check expiration dates. My first shopping experience, I bought toilet paper, water, cereal, and what I thought was milk. Excited to have some food and something familiar, I poured myself a bowl of cereal, opened the "milk" and smelled it (because Rachel's milk had gone sour and had smelled funny). Unfortunately, though I checked dates, this "milk" also smelled funny. Then I read the label. This was not молоко, this was кефир (kefir) a specialty Russian beverage that is basically fermented milk. None-the-less, I decided ok ... it smells a little like yogurt, I will pour it on my cereal, and it will be fine. And actually it wasn't bad, but I wanted milk, moloko, not kefir.So, last night, after another day of realizing how hard it is to get along when you cannot communicate due to a language barrier, I went back to Виктории (Victoria), our local, 24 hour grocery store and tackled the milk shelf again. What had happened before was that I stopped looking at the labels telling me what the beverage was and only looked at the expiration date, so this time I was determined to pay attention to both the name and date! When I got my moloko with an expiration of 07.10 (7 October), I almost could not wait to get home and have some. I cannot believe how much of a relief it was to finally taste milk after craving it for almost 5 days! Beautiful! So, wonderful, in fact, that I cried ... and now I wonder what will be next on the list of frustrating food stories ... probably cheese.