Day 1 (06/02/2014)
Finally, after a 9 hours train ride, I have arrived in Rovaniemi where I meet other exchange students. After a bit of searching, we find the café where we can have breakfast and wait for the students who come with the later train.
When the group is complete 2 hours later, we all leave to Arktikum, a museum in Rovaniemi about Lapland and the Saami people. The museum is divided in 2 parts: a permanent exhibition about Lapland's fauna and flora and also about the Saami culture, and a university research center about Lapland in general.
After the visit of the museum, we leave to Pyhä where we will stay for the week. Once arrived, we get to settle in to our rooms and meet our roommates. My roommate's name is Honoka, a Japanese exchange students.
Later in the evening, almost all the exchange students gather outside for a snowball fight. I am forced to surrender after an honorable fight because my glasses were covered in snow and I couldn't see anything. Having such fun does really good though.
Day 2 (07/02/2014)
8:43. Oh no! We're late! Hurry up! Get dressed! We should have been at breakfast an hour ago. Luckily, my roommate and I manage to be ready when the bus leaves. I decided not to ski or snowboard so I spend the day with other exchange students and a volunteer. We started our day by going for walk next to the ski slopes. We also took the ski lift to go to the top of the mountain, hoping there would be a nice view but we couldn't see anything because of the fog. ¨Before taking the ski lift to go back down, we went to get a drink in a café. I had a hot chocolate,which was very good.
Then we went to Naava, which is a small museum about Lapland's nature, there was for example a section about rocks and another about insects that live in trees. Afterwards we went back to Kairosmaja, the place we stay at, to have lunch and wait for the others to come back. While waiting, we watched the movie "21&over", I think it is mainly funny for young (male) students.
When the people who went to slopes came back, we could go to sauna, which is situated near the lake. After being in the sauna for a while I went outside for a while, only wearing a bikini, and then went back to sauna.
Once heated up and dressed, I went to have dinner. Then we had some free time which I spend talking to my friends. About an hour later, we all went to Kota, which is a kind of wooden tipi, to make pancakes above a fire. It obviously was a very interesting experience, plus the pancakes were delicious. When our bellies were full, we went back to the dining room to talk, dance, basicly have fun. About an hour later, the volunteers came and told us to put on our coat and shoes, then they directed us back to Kota. We were told to sit around the small fire and then a "shaman" started dancing around us and supposedly chanting in a Saami language. The "Shaman" served us some reindeer milk and some weird candy, it didn't taste good to me. At the end, we were told to go to the playing room/basement of the main building. There, a volunteer explained to us that we had just experienced a ceremony to make us a part of Lapland. The exchange students and I stayed in the basement for the rest of the night. And at some point for an unknown reason, stuffed animals were thrown across the room which was kind of fun for a while.
Today, I went cross-country skiing. We did a tour near Kairosmaja. It was fun until I started falling, 7 times in total, but the view was beautiful! After lunch I went for a walk with a couple of friends. At a moment, one of the other girls suddenly ran to the pile of snow on the side of the road, it seemed so nice that I decided to join her. So we played in the snow, made snow angels. I kept sinking into the snow so after a while I decided to crawl or swim out of the snow. I found it very funny. Between getting back to the cabin and dinner, I went to rest in my room. After dinner, a party started in the basement. It reminded me that dancing to Hispanic music is more fun than it seems...
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