'Tis the time of exchange to travel to the Arctic Circle!! La, la ,la, la, la, la, la, la laaaaaaa!!
I did get back from my trip to Muonio, Finland that is, in fact, in the ARCTIC CIRCLE!!! I can't even wrap my mind around the fact that I was THAT far North! Everything was soo beautiful and breathtaking and... just absolutely spectacular!! The only downside is that the busride to Muonio from Porvoo was like 13 hours!!!! Holy crap long right? But it actually got better the more people came on and everyone saw eachother again! We even got to see the Oldies who were there 6 months before we arrived! Most of them were from Australia but there were some from South Africa and Argentina too!
So our fun packed 4 days consisted of 2 days of snowboarding/skiing/cross-country skiing/ nordic skiing....
We also had one of our suppers in this hut with no power, no heating, no doors. The only light we had was from candles and the only heat we received was from the fire, a steaming hot bowl of fish soup, and the cups of glogg (a typical Finnish drink that is warmed up and is usually wine, but not for us kids though!)
It was snowing sooo much when we were there, it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! This trip was the first time I have seen ANY snow all this year! I could never imagine how much I would miss the snow!
This was our hotel. We all styed here and we had cabins that had a loft, full kitchenette, table and washroom. There were 3 beds up on the loft and 1 on a pullout couch downstairs!
One of the nights, we had a talent show sort of thing. Every country that people from had to represent! So that means there was a performance from Canada, the USA, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and many more! It was so interesting and so much fun! However, before anybody got to perform anything for their countries, we got to watch 2 people juggle fire and then got to listen to a band that was made of the students from the school we are in! They were quite good and got everybody pumped up!
We, the Canadians, did a rocking medley of the anthem and J. Biebs "Baby". We started by singing the last bit of the anthem. (Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee, OOOOOH {changes mid "OH" to the beginning of Baby}). We hit a rough patch when the music didn't work properly and we were stuck holding the "Oh" for about 2 minutes.. but when it started working properly, everything went great!
The Brazillian boys danced.
The Brazillian girls danced too!
The Columbians, Chileans, and the Ecuadoians all sang.
Welcome to the Arctic Circle!
During our trip, we snowshoed, took a dog sled ride, reindeer ride, visited Rovaniemi (Santa Claus Village!), visited a reindeer farm,
After a presentation about reindeer farming and what not, we moved back outside to try some other activities!
Such as, lassoing a wooden reindeer! (Oh yeah! I had forgotten to say the older lady above was the one giving the presentation and she herds reindeer AND she owns the reindeer farm. She is dressed in traditional Saami clothing. Saami are the Arctic indigenous people of Northern Sweden and Finland.)
This is the apparell of the Saami Snow Queen.
THESE ARE OUR BEAUTIFUL OLDIES!
There are 2 different groups that come to Finland. There is our group, who come during the summer, and then there is the second group that come during the winter! The second group usually comprises of Austrailians, New Zealanders, Argentinians, etc. In my district, 1420, we only had 2 oldies, Aaron and Laura.
Hopefully I'll be able to put up another blog soon, but I can't promise anything because I'm sooo terrible at blogging regularily! But thank you for reading and I promise I will try to become a more regular blogger!
No comments:
Post a Comment