How can I see my home folder in the finder? How can I go to my home folder in finder? and/or how can I navigate up a folder tree in finder

I am used to Ubuntu and finding /home/name easily in the gui
Shift+Command+H takes you to your home folder
Command+UpArrow takes you one folder up


Have a look at the "Go To" menu in Finder for additional key combinations. Some people like to use the ~ character and the Go to Folder... shortcut as that expands to the current user's home folder like on other UNIX operating systems.

You may also want to have a look at Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts (HT1343) which contains a huge list of OS X Lion keyboard shortcuts.