Adventures in Lapland

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I fractured my wrist in Lapland while snowboarding, and it's really awkward to type with a cast on. And very slow. But I'll get into that in a bit, and let the suspense thicken.
     To get to Lapland, Finnish rotary had four buses going north through the different districts. My bus started in Kotka, which is about an hour south of my city. So my town was the second stop for my bus, so that meant I had a 16 hour bus ride to Muonio, which is where we were staying....I got picked up at 6pm on December 3. Bus ride was pretty boring, had some fun catching up with the other exchange students. A lot of my Exchange friends are in other districts though, so I don't get to hang out with them as much. We drove through the night so we got to the hotel in Muonio called Harriniva at about 9 or 10 am. After we all were settled in our rooms there was a meeting so the hotel people could explain the rules and agenda to us. Then we had lunch and we were off to the ski hill for the rest of the day.

      I think Muonio was an excellent representation of a Lappish town. There wasn't much to the town in terms of services (stores, entertainment etc.) but the landscape and weather totally made up for it. The whole area was pure evergreen forest, with rivers running through. And since it is so far north it was dark for most of the day, which I loved. I think the darkness makes everything more wild and exciting. Unfortunately we never got to see the Northern Lights because the weather was always too cloudy, which was a big disapointment. The weather itself was extremely snowy and windy, which was absolutely perfect. The whole time we were in Lapland it was lightly snowing, and there was enough snow on the ground to make a snowman without seeing grass. I love Lapland. I want to live there.

The ski hill

      So we went skiing. The hill itself wasn't very big. so if I had been on skis I would have had no problem. But I wanted to try something new and since I was in Finland anyways doing all this new stuff,I thought,"Why not"? And I just have to say, that snowboarding is much much much more difficult than skiing. I had such a hard time adjusting constantly shifting my weight to change direction. And my balance was pretty bad at first. But then I was actually doing pretty well, and I was starting to get the hang of it and was having fun when I fell. It wasn't even a big fall, but I tried to brace myself with my hands. Bad idea. I landed really hard on my wrist, and ended up fracturing it.But at the time I just ignored it, even though I couldn't move my wrist or hand at all without pain. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, and I wanted to keep snowboarding. I thought at worst it was just sprained. So I kept going, and only after a disastrous attempt at going up the lift did I finally tell someone. At that point my wrist looked like a golf ball was implanted under the skin. And it hurt.
    So I ended up sitting in the ski shack for a while until an ambulance came. The EMT told me my wrist was broken, and they gave me and my counselor a ride back to the hotel, and then we took a taxi to the nearest health center. It was about 45 minutes away, so Iida (my counselor) just had a nice chat on the way there. Iida is a Finn who went on exchange to Mexico a few years ago, and now she is a Rotex member. The Rotex act as chaperones and mentors to us Inbounds, and they go on the tours with us.
    When we got to the health center, I had some X-rays, and then got a cast on my wrist. It was just to keep my wrist from moving for 3 weeks. Then Iida had to negotiate with the hospital on how to pay for it. Since I am not a Finnish citizen, I have to pay for everything, and since I have American insurance, it doesn't work in Europe. Luckily, Rotary had given Iida some cash, so she used that to pay the hospital and the taxi driver. My American insurance later reimbursed them. Then we went back to the hotel and had salmon soup that had been saved for us from dinner, because at that point it was about 10pm.
    The next day we went skiing again, but because there were quite a few people that didn't want to go, there was the option of doing ice sculpting instead. I did that, but I didn't do any sculpting. There was a little hut/cabin that had a fire going inside, so most of us just sat around the fire talking. That was a really lazy day. The only thing on the agenda was skiing, so me and my friend just hung out all day.

              The next day my group went to the dog sled farm, It was about 8.30 when we walked to the farm, and the first thing we did was get a dog sled ride. It was so fun! I went with three other people, and I was in the front. I felt so wild and free. It  was just the weirdest feeling. The trail was lit with torches because the sun still wan’t up, and the firelight  made the whole thing seem so primal. Plus the barking dogs and the driver speaking only Finnish really completed the scene. I loved it. The wind was in my face, and it was so cold it hurt to breathe too deep. It was a good feeling.  After that we took a tour of the farm and learned all about the daily operations of the farm, and also a lot of information about sled dogs in general. The dogs were much smaller than I expected, but I think that was because they were a mix between Alaskan Huskies and Siberian Huskies.  Huskies are one of my favorite types of dogs. The farm offered dogsled tours , the longest taking two weeks. They also had snowmobile tours, but I think a dogsled tour would be more fun.

After that we walked for about 10 minutes until we got to this big tipi and got reindeer sleigh rides. The people in charge of the reindeer were dressed in traditional Lappish costume , which I think is especially beautiful. It’s just so vibrant and colorful,…and just so…Scandinavian. I love it. Anyways, I really like reindeer. They are such beautiful animals, and their fur is so soft and warm. But we weren’t allowed to touch the reindeer because they were new at pulling, and weren’t used to people yet. It was really fun, although the ride was extremely short.  The trail we were on was a little road lined with birch trees, and the branches formed a ceiling above the trail, and interlocked along the sides to form fences. The whole world was a silvery grey, and sunlight and snowflakes were filtering through. It was wonderful.

                             Then we snowshoed back to the hotel for lunch, and after that we took the bus to a reindeer farm/museum. It was also kind of a Lapland history museum. It was just this little cabin about twenty minutes outside of Muonio, and it was full  of traditional Lappish clothing and tools. The woman working there was in the garb, and she gave a presentation completely in Finnish , but there was a slideshow that went with it, and also a woman translating into english. But I guess she was from Belgium, and she didn’t speak any Finnish. She just knew what the presentation was about. I still don’t really understand why she was there. The presentation was about a year in the life of a reindeer, and also about the year  in the life of a reindeer farmer. It was a really interesting presentation, and it was even cooler because I could understand about half of what she was saying. Then we went outside and she showed us how to lasso a wooden reindeer. Even with one hand in a cast I was able to lasso it!

   

                             Then we went to this tiny little Lappish natural science museum and watched a movie about the Lappish ecosystem. I thought it was interesting, although the narrator had a really monotonic voice. After that we drove across the border into Sweden just to say we had been there, and then we went back.

The next day was more hanging out, and then in the evening we went to the local lukio and watched some fire dancers, and then had a concert. Initially, each country group was suposed to perform something, but the Americans couldn’t agree on anything so we didn’t perform. However, there was a group of American guys who lip synched and danced to ”Big Bootie Bitches” independently. And then another group of American guys crashed it by dancing onto the stage and stripping. Way to represent…The other countries (especially the South Americans) had awesome things, and the Americans stripped… Then we had a dinner for Independence day (we ate reindeer and it was delicious), and then we had a little closing meeting. The Australians gave away their gifts, and the Rotex did little skits. There was also a Lappish guy who did some throat singing. And then there was a party. I didn’t go for long, I just went to check it out, and then I hung out with some friends.

And the next day we left. Thus concludes my Lapland adventures….