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Published: December 13th 2008
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small hill
for those of you that ski or snowboard, this is a small hill... yet for those of you who have never even strapped your foot into a boot attatched to a board, this is HUGE! I love Lapland! It is in a very northern part of Finland, and I was there with the other exchangies for about four days. It was so wonderful! If you have ever heard 'walking in a winter wonderland', imagine that in REAL LIFE! That is pretty much exactly how Lapland was. There was so much snow that someone from Arizona and New Mexico, would have thought that it was impossible, except for on television. Nope, it exsists. Now, be prepared to be taken on quite an adventure.
Because I live in Estonia, I first had to go to Finland. No worries- just two and a half hours to Tallinn, then two and a half hours to Helsinki. I am used to that trip so that was no problem. While there, we met up with the other exchange students that live in Helsinki and we all got on a bus. As the night went on, we picked up more and more kids while driving up to Lapland. That process took about eighteen hours though. None of us slept of course because most of us hadn't seen each other in almost four months so we were too excited, and the bus was not
top of the hill
here is the top (almost) where we were skiing and snowboarding... yes it was snowing when I took the picture. easy to sleep on. When we got to Lapland, it was the around nine in the morning. The bus pulled up to this hotel and we all got out. It didn’t look that large, yet there were around 120 kids to house, and then the other guests that stayed, plus all of the Rotarians (adults who watched us and made sure we stayed out of trouble). Basically, it was bigger than it looked. 120 kids- more than at Karku in Finland where we had the language camp.
On our first day, it was hectic. People chose to go skiing, snowboarding, or sledding. That afternoon, after lunch, we went to the slope. It was fairly small sized, as some friends noted… I don’t really know what would be so let’s just take their word. To be honest, I was a little nervous about the lift because I had a snowboard, and when you can’t move your feet apart to catch yourself with them, you can tumble all the way down a hill that is full of cold stuff and have everyone of your friends watch. As amazing as that sounds, I didn’t want it to happen… to me anyway. I wasn’t
me snowboarding!
i know I am small in the pic (and in real life) yet it is me snowboarding!! SO much fun! I am addicted! afraid to fall though, mostly because I knew it would happen. Many times too. The next day, I was covered in invisible bruises. The weirdest thing about falling in the snow is that you don’t feel pain then, only later when you remove clothing and you begin to feel your own body. Yet it was more fun than I can say! I am addicted!
The second day, we all had breakfast and then headed back up to the slope and spent most of the day up there. Or some stayed behind and made ice sculptures (unfortunately don’t have any pictures of them). That night for dinner we had reindeer and potatoes.
The third day was a traveling touristy day. There was a deer and reindeer farm that we visited where we got to feed the reindeer and pet them. Then after lunch, there we huskies and reindeer that we got to ride- like a sled team with the dogs, and like a sleigh ride with the reindeer! For dinner, it was outside not far from our hotel and we had some pancakes (just like crepes I swear, and so very tasty) and soup around a huge fire.
The last day
we were in Finland, we got to pack our things, say bye to the hotel and then we drove to a city called Roveinimi. It was a town where Santa lives! Well, where his workshop is anyway. It is in the Arctic Circle, and snowing when we got there: how appropriate. Some of us got to see Santa (and got a picture with him, yet as a group because there were so many of us squeezed into the picture). The funniest thing we noticed too! He spoke German, French, Finnish, and English. We got a few hours of free time in ‘Santa town’ and so the souvenir shops were first on the list of course and there were loads of them so it kept us busy. When we first got there, there were some humongous snow men out front and so many pictures were taken with them. Also, there was this ice hill, specially put there for exchange student idiots who would just die to break their neck (no pun intended). One last trip for lunch, and we all had to say bye to everyone until next time (excluding the oldies because this was their last tour- they leave in
snow shoes!
we wore these when we walked to see the dogs and reindeer January).
The last part of the journey does not end there for us though. There was the bus ride back to Helsinki and all the kids got off at their stops. The Estonian kids had to keep going though. We spent the morning in a hotel catching up on sleep and then we got onto the boat, and continued to our city: Tartu for me of course. I got back home at around nine that night, and went straight to bed.
This has been the longest entry because it was a tour that lasted about five days so I do apologize for it being so late and quite a bit to digest. Now, I leave you to ponder exactly how it is that I ended up here to be eating reindeer and blood sausage, to snowboard and ride on a dog sled, to read Estonian and Russian subtitles on the theatre screens, to go to a school who’s name took me forever to pronounce, and to make friends from literally all over the world, who ended up coming to the same area as myself.
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Rachel
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Yay!! all of that sounds amazingly fun!! I bet those 4 days were the best pick-me-up huh? I hope your printing all those pics I know we will all be looking through them, and gasping away like we air climbing a mountain, at Flying Star in 6 months!!:)