Week 10

The days are getting very short now. It really messes with my head. Once the sun starts setting I start thinking, okay time to eat dinner and go to bed...but its 3 in the afternoon. I spend about half the day then feeling tired, ready to sleep....I will not miss this part of Finland.

I went to Finland this weekend with three of my classmates and we had a lot of fun. Our plan was to go see the northern lights but it was too cloudy so we didn't see anything :( That was disappointing, but we did get to see reindeer, snow, foxes, Santa's Village, and a museum so it was still a good trip. Here are some photos!

Arrival in Rovaneimi. We took the night train Friday night and arrived Saturday morning at 8 AM.

They had some interesting reindeer sculpture stuff in the city, I liked this one.

 

Nothing is open in Rovaneimi on Saturday morning. Not until around 9 or 10 at least. We spent the first hour wandering around, looking for somewhere to grab breakfast while we waited for the car rental place to open. We finally found McDonalds!

Rovaneimi's McDonalds is, according to their poster, the northern most golden arches. I guess now I have to go to McDonalds in Antarctica. Took this picture of the trash cans because kiitos is one of the few Finnish words I have learned, probably because it's short. It means thank you!

 

We rented a car and drove out to Ivalo, way up north. The area is beautiful, but it got dark so quickly! By 4 pm it was so dark that even with flash my camera's pictures are pitch black.

On our way to Ivalo we saw a herd of reindeer, right beside the road! We of course stopped to take pictures.

 

This is another herd we saw later. We saw several herds along out trip. It was a six hour drive both ways so we had plenty of opportunity. At night we saw two foxes cross the road but they were way too fast to get a picture of them.

 

 

Sunday we went to Santa's Village. The ground was all iced over because the snow was melting that day. They have reindeer, but only Mon-Fri, and they have huskies that you can watch pull a sleigh, but not that day because there wasn't enough snow anymore. We had terrible timing.

Here's the museum we went to. It had some interesting exhibits. There was a short, 5 min simulation of the northern lights that we watched. The closest we came on our trip.

 

A real Finnish reindeer :D We walked around this area that had a wall of graffiti; some of the artists were talented. Some were not.

Wednesday I leave for Rome! I'll share some pictures of that whenever I get back.