Lapland tour!

In the early hours of the morning of the 30th of November I jumped on a bus at one of Oulainen's local petrol stations to a bunch of exchange students, a few Rotex' and a Rotarian. We headed even further north, to Lapland and well up into the Arctic Circle! My final Rotary trip was upon me- Lapland tour!

Four busses and a total of around 140 exchange students arrived in Harriniva, Muonio at around 10:30am and we all quickly made friends with all of the new exchange students we didnt know and greeted all the ones we did like old friends.

Day one involved lunch, and then we took the busses up to Olos to go downhill skiing/snowboarding, or crosscountry skiing. I went downhill skiing and am proud to say that I have managed to learn how to fall without bruising or concussing myself! ;D



The first night also graced us with a welcome party of Northern Lights! (Sixth time for me now! SO lucky to live in the north! :D )

Day two I stayed at Harriniva with a small group and we made snow sculptures and grilled makkara in a small hut by the river that seperates Finland and Sweden.

We went to sauna in the afternoon, which of course involved running outside from the  90-100+ degree sauna into the -20 to -30 odd degree weather and rolling in the snow! It's a thrill!
That night we made a little trip to the local primary school in Muonio where we had an evening of performances, dances by some students from the school, traditional Sami songs by a Sami man (indigenous Finnish person) and he also explained his traditional clothes that he wore, then we all had the chance to perform something from our own countries. It was good fun!

Day three was our last full day at Harriniva. We were split into four groups and all had the chance to visit Pallas Nature Centre, get to know about reindeer life and feed reindeer in Torassieppi, visit an arctic dogsled centre and go on husky rides, try snowshoes, go on a reindeer sled ride and stand on/cross the border of Finland and Sweden!

 At the border of Finland and Sweden with my Colombian Newbie!

Day three also marked our last night. We had a beautiful evening all together dancing and hanging out.
Us oldies had the opportunity to share some words of encouragement and to say our last things to our group of amazing newbies; it was a very sad and emotional night for everyone. It really hit home that I only have a month left here. It is unbelieveable to think that I have been away from Australia, my family and everything that I have ever known for 11 full months. It's incredible to reflet on the year I have had. I have made so many life long friends this year and the thought of it soon coming to an end truly does break my heart. This year has been an absolute adventure full of many highs and of course some lows but when it all comes down to it I wouldn't trade any of it for anything! As well as discovering the world, and exposing myself to some of it's many different cultures and languages, this year has been one of self discovery. From all of the challenges I have faced I have learnt valuabe lessons. I have always liked to think of myself as a rather independant person and even back home I liked to make decisions all by myself, but this year I have been forced to face each day as a complete adult, independant from my parents. I have had to make choices and draw my own boundaries and I have learnt what I myself value and what my morals are. It has really been a year of learning.
All of my beloved friends from all over the world will forever be a part of me and I will cherish the memories of our times together forever.
Whilst I never want this year to end, I also am excited for the next chapter. I believe it's impossible to say that I haven't changed, after all that this year has brought me, however I don't know how much or really in what ways. I guess in coming home to Australia next month and back to the same life that I had last year I will really see what I learnt and how I changed and grew over my exhcnage year. It will be interesting to see how my life, that will basically be the same as before, will be different now that I am different.
This year has really opened my eyes to the world and now my plans and dreams for my future are so much bigger and brighter and seem so much more within reach than I had ever thought possible! I love Australia but she can't keep me forever, I am now a citizen of the world and I plan on leaving my mark on many more places around the globe! Life is an exciting adventure and I am so happy to have realised that more so this year and am so happy to have already started mine so young!

The 18 of us that started this adventure together in January,
all together for the last time

On the morning of Tuesday the 3rd of December we started our journey back south but this time via Rovaniemi. In Rovaniemi we visited the real Santa Claus at Santa's Village!
We chatted and took a photo with Santa and then wandered around, saw some more reindeer and a lot of christmas trees, snowmen and a slide for tobogganing.

We had one last meal together at a restaurant in Rovaniemi and then the four busses parted and went their seperate ways. It was another sad time because for us oldies it was the last time we were going to see a lot of people before we set of back home in a months time :(

This year has gone incredibly fast, I can't believe it and still now it doesnt feel real that in a month I will be on my way back to Australia. Not that I dont love all you guys back home but I'm sure you understand why I dont want to leave! This is another home to me now, a whole other world, with family, friends, school and a life. It's going to be hard to leave it all behind and wonder when I will get the opportunity to return, but I will come back- that I know for sure!

Marraskuu

I spent a day at a small primary school just out of Oulainen's centre giving presentations on Australia to about 6 different classes of kids. They were all very excited to have a foreigner there and keen to hear about Australia- such a different country to Finland. Once again one on the funny moments of the day was their reactions to me saying that I hadn't seen snow before I came to Finland this year, and when I told of our winters temperatures and how much hotter our summers are (in Finland, over 20 degrees is very warm so even our winter sounds like Summer to them!). Their faces were priceless!

I saw my first professional icehockey game at the beginning of November. I went to Oulu with my host dad and one of my host brothers and watched Oulu's team (Kärpät) absolutely thrash (7-0) the team from Hämeenlinna. It was absolutely packed with people! It was a great atmosphere to watch the game in.

My host town may be small but a couple weeks of each year they host Musiikiviikot (music weeks) and have all different types of artists come and hold concerts.
I went and saw Eva and Manu (a Finnish girl and French guy) with some friends which was really good! And also one Saturday night Haloo Helsinki was even here to perform! They are a very popular Finnish band so Alison came from Kokkola and joined me too! We saw them and then later that night we also had the chance to see Sini Sabotage (a currenly rather famous Finnish DJ).

Autumn holiday

Well, this has been a long time coming! Autumn has now been and well and truly gone! We are deep in snow slippery ice here in the north but let me take you back to October/November and fill you in on what has happened in the last couple of months!

It was an exciting morning when the autumn leaves had frozen so beautifully.

It was even more exciting that between dinner time and when I was heading out to play floorball in the evening in that same day it had snowed!

It was then even MORE exciting when I woke up the next morning there was snow covering the whole town! Absolutely beautiful! And still only mid-October!

My school had an interesting way of bringing in the autumn holiday week. Thursday of the week before, we finished classes at 2pm and went to the middle school gym for a floorball tournament. I played on one team with some of my friends. We won one out of the three games that we played so we didn’t make the finals but we had fun which is, of course, the main thing! The tournament finished at around 5pm and then I went out to get dinner with a friend, went home and packed some things and then…. headed back to school at 9pm! Why you ask ? Night school of course!!

We spent the night at Lukio doing all sorts of things! An hour of different not at all serious 10 minute lessons (I led the one on Australian slang), and a night of games and just basically hanging out. We had a boys against girls dodgeball type game throughout the two story building in the dark which was good fun! We had a bit of a pj party too with one guy DJing. Then I spent most of the night just playing card and board games with different people. It was good fun! Exhausting though! Some people were smart and actually slept… I was not one of those people!

I walked home from school at 8am and went to bed for a couple of hours. I had to get up by 12pm though and pack my bag and head off to Ylivieska for my district camp weekend! My district (1400) and one other district (1380) joined together for the camp which was held from the Friday afternoon til the Sunday afternoon of that weekend.

It was a pretty relaxed weekend. By then a lot of snow had fallen and a few spontaneous snowball fights were obviously bound to break out!

The weekend was just hanging out with other exchange students and with a couple Rotex and a Rotarian from each district. 

 

We played some games, went for a light hike in the woods, and went to sauna together (which of course involved running outside and rolling in the snow many many times!)

 

When it all wrapped up on Sunday afternoon, despite living only 30kms from the town we stayed in, I had to wait for a couple hours for a train that would stop there as many don’t because my town is so small. It was no worries though as Alison took a later train too and we hung out together and grabbed lunch!

It was a really lovely weekend!

It didn’t stop there though! Once I got into my town I walked home, unpacked and then repacked and headed back to the train station and off to Oulu! I spent the night there with two friends of mine, Leena and Pauli, before we headed off on Monday for Lapand!

Autumn holiday had started and I spent it up north in the Arctic Circle! Woohoo!

On the drive up we stopped in Tornio and walked over the bridge into the town of Haaparanta (Sweden!) We visited the big Ikea there and did a bit of shopping around the place but mainly it was the novelty of crossing into Sweden that got me! There was no border control or anything like that, you could cross freely. It was just a small bridge over a river that divided the two countries! Awesome!

We eventually made it all the way up to Kolari where we spent the first two nights with Leena’s grandparents. We crossed the Finnish-Swedish boarder multiple times up there too as, once again only a river separated the two countries!

We visited up in Ylläs and went to the ski slopes and we randomly found an exhibition on Lapland and its people at a place off of one of the roads we drove along.

We spent a couple days in another part of Kolari with Leena’s other grandmother. There wasn’t anything there but we took some nice walks and just relaxed, it was a holiday after all!

Whilst reindeer are wild animals they are actually owned by people. At this time of the year all of the reindeer are rounded up and they work out which babies belong to who and they divide up which are going to be taken to the slaughter house. We didn’t see many but there were a couple that were still loose! Real live reindeer!

 

A week of eating reindeer and moose… yum!

On Friday we headed to Rovaniemi where we spent the last night with Pauli’s oldest brother and his family. 

We walked around the city a little on Friday night and then on Saturday Leena and I did a little shopping. Saturday afternoon we headed back home to Oulainen.

It was a lovely holiday and despite it being the 'Autumn' break, we were knee deep in snow the whole time!