Trip to Russia: Don't try this at home, kids.

SO. I'm not done with Lapland blogging yet(will I ever be?), but by gosh I just went to Russia and I wanted to share something that can't be at all explained by uploading pictures. This was a bit of an interesting situation which left me with a quickened heartbeat and a tinge of adrenaline, symbolizing a nice level of uncertainty I experienced which people refer to when they say "Anything is possible in Russia." Now of course, this is one story out of one city from one guy in this one country. So don't let this be your impression of Russia, I'll post the absolutely gorgeous pictures of the city and other great things later. For now here we go.

So let's do a really quick intro to get you up to speed so this story actually makes some sense in context. We went last week to a place in Russia called St. Petersburg (OR LENINGRAD IF YOU'RE A SOCIALIST, YOU SOCIALISTS!). It's one of the largest cities in Russia, the second largest to be specific. The damn place has a few hundred thousand less people than -Finland- aka the thing is huge. Something like 4.7 million, where as Finland has 5.something million. Moscow is even bigger, something like 10 million people. So instead of saying thousand or million let's just say Finland. So St Petersburg has something like 0.85 Finland people, and Moscow has something like 1.8 Finland people. All necessary conversions aside, St Petersburg was originally named.....St Petersburg (I should never be a tour guide), and then got it's name changed at one point to Leningrad during the Soviet Union times. So just know that Leningrad = St Petersburg so there's no confusion on where I was. Okay I think we're good now, I'll add maps and all that stuff later. Right now let's just get to it.

So we took a cruise ship to St Petersburg, as it's a city of many many interconnected waterways. When we got there, we were accommodated in a hotel: Hotel Moscow. It was really nice until you got past the second floor(we were on the 4th), but even after that it wasn't so bad. Just like the city the hotel is freaking huge. So on the first night we went to a traditional "Russian Dinner Party," it was really fun stuff that I'll blog about later. The main thing to take from it is that we had shots between every course and then some, so by the time dinner was over we had all had something like 6 shots of vodka. It was a respectable amount, but not enough to make us damn crazy. Either way many of us decided not to go out that night because well, we didn't get so much sleep on the boat. Actually I got almost none. There was a club on the boat and the cabins were really hard to sleep in for reasons I'll explain later. So a large minority of us were ready to just kinda chill a bit and hit the sack.


This notion left about 6 of us out in the lobby type area of the floor we were staying on. By lobby I mean a table and a couple comfortable chairs outside the elevators. So we start playing some international card games, I don't quite remember what they were but by gosh they were pretty fun. So we start playing and having some fun and being almost sort of loudish. Not really that bad, we were all pretty dead from the night before. So as we're playing some cards this dude, maybe in his early or mid 30s comes wandering slowing around and eventually settles close to the table and chairs where we're sitting and just watches. He's pretty tall, maybe an inch or two taller than me, and a bit heavier than me just in terms of build and muscle. He's not fat.

So he seems slightly on some sort of low gear auto pilot, perhaps drunk I would say. He's carrying a huge water jug in his right hand that he only holds in one way when he's walking. Just down by his side with his arm completely elongated only bending it to take a sip. He's got jet black hair with a thick dark green sweater and skin that was white but still slightly dark. Not pale like me. Perhaps you'll understand why I remember him like I could file a police report on him in a second. This dude watches our game, looking pretty friendly and jovial really. He watches us play and laughs along with us whenever something funny happens and is smiling and seems to be having almost as good of a time as we're having. Pretty cool.

So after we play one round that lasts half of forever we decide we're all ready for bed. So we start down the hall to get ready for bed. Once again the guy kinda gets this "huh?" look on his face and starts walking around aimlessly. The 4 girls immediately went in their rooms and shut the door, I think they were slightly creeped out by this guy for some strange unknown and outlandish reason. Well he seemed nice to me. He was just watching our game. Maybe he didn't have much to do. Took a night walk and found some foreigners and enjoyed watching them have some fun, maybe he needed something to lighten his day.

So me and my French roomate/friend Killian start getting ready for bed. We have the door open and we're just doing the normal thing, brushing teeth and such. So then I notice this guy walking slowly down the hall, again a bit aimlessly. I happen to be out in the hall when he passes by. He looks up at me(he was walking with his head hung before), and gives me a smile. I'm like okay cool this guy is really friendly. I say hey how are you?? Oops.

We get into a conversation, at this point Killian comes out of the room as well and joins as the conversation starts. How are you how are you, good good blah blah......Where are you from??........So, I'm not one to generalize, or at least I try not to. I've made jokes about not telling people in Russia where I'm from, but I was never at all serious. I've heard a couple stories about Americans having a slightly hard time in Russia, but really none of them were even -that- bad at all. I mean it's been a while since the Cold War right?

Killian: I'm from France, Me: I'm from the US......(Oh shit). The expression on this guy's face completely changes, he does a double take and his tone does a complete 180. Now in discourse that follows this I'm going to try and mention a few memorable points and give the jist, but there was a lot more filler out of no where mumbley stuff. He is just kind of like Oooh.. Well what do you do in Russia? The US is a very beautiful place. Me: it's beautiful here as well, this is an amazing city. Russian dude: You know I love the US in a lot of ways, I love your nature, I love your freedoms, but your government..is nothing. Your wars are not good, you know you will not win in Afghanistan. Me: Yeah I    Russian dude: There is too much money. It's stopping you from winning. (it was as if he meant to say there some sort of money deal going on with corruption that made us unable to push through). Your Afghanistan is like our Chechnya...If we just had 1000 men all with a grenade in hand, in one day Chechnya would be destroyed(whispery voice). But there is too much money involved, we can't get past the corruption. Now as a side note,  I'm not really sure where he got this thousand dudes with a grenade battle plan. Doesn't really seem like a well thought out idea to me, but I'm no expert.

He then goes on to tell me he's an ex-Russian soldier( F*** F*** F***)..... Which, that makes me wonder even more about the thousand man grenade battle plan. But I'm not thinking about that anymore. Russian dude: You know we were in Georgia protecting somebody(can't remember who, maybe it's a small population who is sided with Russia that Georgia was apparently attacking), and Russian soldiers risked their -lives- for those who were being innocently murdered. A Russian soldier is a good man. He would protect you, and me, and you(points to all of us). He would jump in front of you in the line of gunfire. And you know in Georgia, you know there were some Russian soldiers killed much because of American involvement.

At this point I have NO CLUE what to say. What do you say to that? So I start to try and be like I'm sorry that happened, I would like to change bad things when I get older. I've just learned about a lot of bad things in our government, I didn't make any of these decisions(something like that). So he goes on to say Oh I know I know that it wasn't your fault, it wasn't you....But you know you are a citizen of your country....And if an enemy of my country, steps on -my- land, I will protect it.......There. will. be.......war. Okay so now my heart rate has begun to rise, this pleasant conversation has not turned out at all how I ever thought it would go! Is this guy gonna give some sort of speech about how bad me and my government are and then proceed to attack me??? This guy is quite bigger than me AND an ex-soldier. I start scanning his body/pants to see if he maybe had a weapon on him, and I'm not even being perverted!

I thought quickly, maybe if I mess up his thunder so he can't finish his speech he won't be so enthusiastic as to attack me. I thought maybe I could just knock him off his high horse or try to filibuster or something he'd be confused enough not to rile himself up. I try to change the subject, Me: Hey you know St Petersburg is a beautiful city! What do you do here in St Petersburg? What are your life plans in the long run??? Every time I ask a question he gives me a few sentences of an answer and just continues right back on his rant. It's not working! I thought about just quickly running in my room, slamming and locking the door. But then Killian would be left out there with the crazy. Not to mention that making any sudden movements didn't seem like a good idea in this situation.....

So I continue my efforts unsuccessfully but at once see a security guard walking down the hall towards us. Okay cool, maybe if he attacks me the security guard will try to handle things enough for me to get away. I figure the ex soldier might make quick work of the security guard but at least that would buy me some time. Luckily, the security guard walks right up to the Russian dude and asks for his hotel card. The guy gives the security guard his card, security dude looks it over and says come with me(I assume, it was all Russian). So they both just randomly stroll off down the hall........sigh of relief!!!! I was still in one piece! So we just shrug our shoulders nervously and hit the sack. Wow. I put the chain on the door that night, and that's a fact!! Never saw him again, crazy.







P. S. Now you should please fact check what I'm about to say before you run around telling people this or use it to base your opinion, but I got most of this information from the book Blood and Oil. Check it out if you'd like to know more about what I'm about to say. As a political side note. Holy crap America, we need desperately to get off oil. It's my impression that one of the main reasons we're even hanging out in Georgia is for oil.  We have a pretty productive pipeline there, which I think Russia feels should be theirs anyways. Not to mention Georgia and Russia have political turmoil. Like many countries we get oil from, we, like assholes, trained funded and armed their military. Sometimes when we go in for oil in a country that isn't first world/has need/political strife, there's some sort of uprising against it. So we have to arm these places a lot of times to ensure our pipelines are safe. Russia, having been at war with Georgia, probably didn't like that very much. AT ALL. A few years ago Russia invaded Georgia, and we all wonder why gas prices go up sometimes. Just watch current events for a clue. It is unfortunately not my impression that other a lot of countries have an entirely better track record for being nice to countries they get oil from, so let's all take note of this. My fellow Americans and people of the World, we must know where our oil comes from and the price that is paid for it not just at the pump, but in blood. We have to find alternative energy and fast! Otherwise people like me will keep having weird experiences like this, and that's the least of the problems from it! Peace!

Lapland: Snow Castle and a Fun Yet Sleep Deprived Morning

Wow, there was literally so much freaking stuff that happened in the Lapland trip that I'll be blogging about it forever. It's interesting how stuff can just be hunky dory for a week or two then all the sudden you can't get the info down on the net quick enough to do justice to what you've been up to.

I'll start with the beginning of the wonderful trip to Lapland. So first of all, Lapland isn't a country, or even part of a country. It's kind of a region that that is spread over 4 different countries. It's the region where the native Sami people live, their traditional land. Now I'm no history buff nor do I know exactly how the Sami people got there, but perhaps wiki can provide extra knowledge. Here is the region which is considered "Lapland."

Lapland includes parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and a tiny tiny bit of Russia

Now for those of you who didn't know where exactly in Finland I'm studying, the University of Eastern Finland is in the following Finnish location:

 

Now UEF is broken into three places which are pretty far apart. I am studying in the Joensuu part of UEF. 

So when we went to Lapland, our central hub destination was Saariselka, a small town in Northern Lapland:

The most northern dot highlighted in green.

As you can see, we had an extremely long bus ride up there, so we made a couple really nice stops on the way. We left Joensuu at 1130pm, and arrived at our first destination around 10am. First sight to see was the biggest ice castle in Finland, annnd I completely forgot what it's called. Either way, it was really close to Oulu( a place called Kemi) , as you can see on the map.

As one might guess from the length of the trip, everyone was kind of out of it when we got there after traveling all night. Let me add a video to give you a good idea of how this bus ride went. This is us at a bus stop a few hours before arriving at our first destination, and in fact, I kinda stay this loopy throughout the day as you will see:

Not terribly long after these videos were taken we arrived finally to the ice castle to take a nice look around on 1-2 hours of sleep. 

Here are some pictures from fairytale land(makeshift name since I forgot the actual one):

Strange, I've been in a salt mine church made of well...salt. And now I've been in an ice church made of ice. Next it'll something crazy like wood, or fire.

Ice hotel rooms are a nice touch. The beds were actually quite comfortable.

 

Spider pig, spider pig, does whatever a spider pig does. We actually watched that movie on the bus, it was a damn hoot! A hoot!

Me and some of the gang

Then I came across a nice igloo.

Then I got done in the actual ice castle and decided to go for a nice slide outside the ice castle where you could go to the top of the slide and have a nice view or just slide on down. Look at how I'm sitting, this is sleep deprivation at it's finest, folks. 

So that was the ice castle......or was it. As I was making my way out of the ice castle I came across this fun little contraption.....unfortunately.  It was a sled connected at the side to a board that connected to this pivoting post in the middle. So basically it was a ride. You got in the sled and had someone push the board and your sled traced out a circle in the snow. It was set up like one of those G force simulators they use on astronauts. Like G force sled! I was like whoa awesome, I saw people getting pushed in it. I decided to take a video and ride in it at the same time....you know, for the blog to give you guys some good perspective.....but wait....I didn't have anyone to push me :(

Ah ha! Here is a big group of dudes from different countries that have come up near the sled. Maybe I'll ask them! "Hey guys would mind pushing this sled for me while I take a video?" Mistake number 1.  The dudes get this hell yeah look in their faces and we go up there. Here's the video from that:

Yeah so it was a lot harder to hold on than I thought it would be, let's just put it that way. I didn't really notice that most people riding in the sled were holding on for dear life even when they had only one person pushing. I was filming and couldn't hold on, like a damn genius. A real genius.

And of course such an event needed some commentary after the fact. Whew, that was ridiculous. After this I just ran to the bus like a little dog with it's tail between it's legs. No more interest in the little pieces of fun like that damn thing. Alright guys, more coming later. This was just the beginning of the Lapland trip, which started out with a bang! Or actually it started out with a thud. dang it. Peace!

Technology baby!

So I figured I would go ahead and add a worth telling filler blog between huge ass blog entries. Soo many gargantuan blog entries, so beauty in simplicity right? Well without further a doo doo here it is. I'm writing this on a Finnish computer so pardon my lack of spell check.

I've got a bike that my fellow American gave me before heading back to the states, but I haven't ridden it in weeks. No it's not because I'm an American, cause I know that's what you all are thinking! Specially you Americans.... Anyways. It's generally mostly because the dang thing, although it was an awesome gift, has had a small slew of problems since I got it. Apparently the other guy who came here last semester bought it brand new, then got into some argument with his girlfriend or something, and went into a blind rage......on his bike? That's what I've been told, and that's the best reason I've got as to knowing why the bike didn't stop when I first rode it.

So my tutor took me to a bike repair shop and we got'er all fixed up. The bike shop/fixer guy only spoke in Finnish it was fine because my Finnish tutor(really more like a person that helps you with stuff, not academics) was there. So I go riding it. It's hard to ride in the snow! Really hard! Too hard! It takes me like 40 minutes to get to campus when it only takes me an hour to walk! Other people didn't have a problem, I guess that's another part of being Finnish. That you're a beast at riding a bike too! I mean I hardly get out of my slightly up hill neighborhood before being pretty out of breath. I've done some pretty harsh biking stuff too. In Croatia I willed myself up a mile and a half of switchbacks up a mountain without stopping and having been previously out of shape, and this is this hard!? Well I soon, well give it over a week actually, derived that I had a flat tire...Motherf*** I'm an idiot!

And so today I decided to again take my bike into the shop after a failed attempt to pump it up. I know you can do patches and stuff yourself but I figured I would take it in on the off chance that there was some sort of legit damage to the wheel frame since I've ridden on it with a flat tire. And I don't know damn about bikes. I still livestrong though. So I take it in on a slight whim without my tutor, figuring everything will go smoothly and easily with the bike guy who couldn't speak english. Nope. I go up to the bike guy and say I don't speak Finnish, but (points at tire). Then he starts raddling off in all kinds of Finnish I have no idea what he's saying. He's not even speaking slowly, which is minimum requirement even if I knew Finnish at an intermediate level. We're standing outside the shop at this point and he waves me inside still speaking a continuous stream of Finnish. I follow him in with my bike and has me come over to the computer. He pulls up google translate and then we just start communicating almost instantly. He typed in something that translated to "bike is at 13 after," which I assumed meant something like the bike is ready at 1pm. I wrote in google translate, "I can be here at 14:30, is that okay?" He said yes yes and I wrote "How much will it cost?" He wrote down and said 17 euro(I understand numbers, but that's it). I wrote "great! Thank you very much!" and he responded with a bunch of Finnish but I heard the phrase for you're welcome in there somewhere. We got off the computer and both said thanks, bye in Finnish and it was done.

Wow. Now that's crazy. It was such a strange feeling going from no communication/complete confusion to almost perfect understanding, just because we were typing our respective languages into this black box. Technology people, ridiculous. We truly live in a new world these days, even compared to 10  years ago. Nuckin futs gang, nuckin futs.

Trip to Koli so Koldi: Part should have finished this entry weeks ago

First let me say that this is a blog I've had going for a few weeks now. In the first paragraph I'm actually referring to the blog I posted with all the videos on it  when I said "last blog"

Helloooo again people

Well I decided to go ahead and start updating this guy again since the last entry was, while full of good, practical, applicable information, maybe a slight cop out to a real blog entry.  So here we are, we arrive once again to a real blog entry you can smell taste and touch. Yeah.

So this past Friday(feb 18) me and the gang(the gang being >50 exchange students) all loaded up in the mystery machine(the mystery machine being a charter bus) and went to solve a mystery(turns out Finland was behind the f***ing cold all along, who knew).  All necessary metaphors aside, we went to a place called Koli and it was very cold and beautiful. It was interesting taking the bus out of the great city of Joensuu, because I really got to see some of the country side, which also allowed some nice photo opportunities. Well, not nearly as good as the ones when I got out the bus. Either way, when I took the train to Joensuu it was dark, and I really didn't get a good idea what it was all like.

Turns out it was like they all said it was like. You know I'm learning something more and more the longer I'm in another country: what they told you in school is generally correct. How about that, they weren't all lying to complete some elaborate hoax that was so big no one knew exactly what that hoax was. I've thought wrong all these years. Anyways, so Finland is country of endless forests. We went driving around, and by gosh, we were just driving through a forest the whole time. I mean, you'd think, oh back home you have mountains and aren't you driving through forest there? Nope. I mean I guess you are, technically. But here so far in my experience it seems like none of the roads are broad and open. Surely the further you go South, where everyone actually lives in Finland, you would see more big roads that are open and reveal the landscape. As We were driving around outside of the city, really there were trees on one side, and tress on the other side. Didn't really see any rivers, fields, lakes, etc.


 Although here in winter a lake = a field here. When you look, there's almost no way to tell for sure if what you're looking at is a lake or a field without actually trekking on the damn thing. Counter intuitively, usually there is a layer of water between the snow and the lake ice, so you know once you've you've gotten your foot wet and very cold and pissed off. I guess there is one way to tell from far away, and that's if the dang thing is freaking huge. Fields in Joensuu at least don't seem to be so big, the forest likes this place too much for that. But lakes love to compete with the forest, locked in a never ending battle. Point is, if you come here in the winter and you see a big field, it's a lake. 

So here in this past week it's gotten a bit colder, generally with temperatures between -15 and -22 degrees Fahrenheit. You always know it's cold here when you go over the bridge to Joensuu city center and the river under the bridge is literally steaming. That's right steaming. You know it's below -10 or -15 when it does that. Why does it steam? My gosh I'm not really sure. I'll take a stab and go on a tangent explanation, if you hate/don't believe in science, skip the following paragraph.

So water generally steams more when it is much warmer than the air, right? Pour the hot water out of your sink and you might get some steam. Well water can only get so cold. It reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit and then freezes unless, for instance, it's in constant motion. This is why lakes freeze and rivers have a much more difficult time freezing like the one in Joensuu that flows constantly without ice in some places. Well while the water is always around 32 degrees, the air temperature can still drop considerably. Once the air temperature gets down to something like -15, the temperature difference between air and water is very close to the one you may have had when you were pouring 120 degree water out of the faucet in your 72 degree room. This creates similar conditions to the ones that created steam before, so there ya go. That wasn't terribly scientific but it's all I got or care to have haha. CJ you can rip me a new one if this is all just dumb and wrong. Either way here's a picture of what I'm talking about: 

Alright so yeah, it was really freaking cold on this day we went to Koli. Koli is a place where you can go skiing and snowboarding or just sight seeing. It's the closest thing in the area that has any sort of a "mountain." It's funny because whenever you think of Finland you think oooh snowboarding skiing and stuff yeaahh. But no, I mean sorta. They do that stuff, but really I hear and notice that Finland is a bit of a flat country. You got your hills here and there, but nothing that could make for the best and most extreme places to ski and snowboard. They do have cross country skiing here though, which is just like flat ground skiing, with a slight hill or two here and there. People actually do it all the time here as a means of transportation(or something like that), but that's for another blog entry.


So we drive to Koli and arrive at the foot of the hill-mountain. We unload out the bus and go into the ski lodge. While in the ski lodge we all decide to first take a quick walk-stroll down to see the lake we passed on the way in just before stopping. We traverse the parking lot and start down the very small sloping road. This road is stupidly slick, I mean I have no idea how Finns drive on this stuff people. The ice is so well packed down, you could basically ice skate on the road, I'm not kidding here. Let me show ya somethin(fire marshall bill anyone?)

This is a road in Joensuu outside my apartment that is really really slick, yet the bus just charges on through and picks people up like nothing is happening. I actually almost slipped and fell down in this video just a second after I say "readers." You can see the camera go crazy for a second when I almost slip on the road myself.

So as we're walking down to take pictures at the lake, people start slipping and falling down on the road haha. Check these pictures out:

How people drive on this when people can't even walk on it? The world may never know.

So then we went down to see the lake. It was pretty nice, kinda trippy really. I was just a huge huge clearing of snow. It's cool because apparently there was an ice road near us. During the winter the ice gets so thick that you can drive a car or even a bus on it. So here in Finland, a land of lakes, in the winter a bunch of new roads and shortcuts open up in the winter in the form of ice roads over said lakes. 

After this shot was taken the whole group was so cold after being outside for 15 minutes that everyone walked quickly then just started running ski lodge because no one could feel their toes. It was really cold. On peoples eyebrows and eyelashes had developed what the exchange students have come to call "Finnish make up." It's where the moisture from your breath glides over your face and freezes on your hair, eyebrows, and eye lashes so they turn completely white. We just threw open the door to the ski lounge, ditched our shoes, and began rubbing our toes for about 15-20 minutes. Here's a picture from that instance as well:

So we're all extremely cold and not going to ski at all because of the cold but quickly learn that Koli is a very beautiful place, completely worth just going to look around and take pictures. We begin ascending the "mountain in the ski lift, and the thing you really notice is the trees. It's crazy! You wouldn't think snow cover would greatly effect how the tree looks but my gosh, this place had snow cover like you would never imagine a place could have really. What was really weird is that the trees at the very top looked completely different than the trees at the bottom because of how much snow was on them. Luckily once we got up to the top it warmed up quite a bit. Well, it wasn't warm at all. But it might....might have been above 0 degrees F. No it wasn't nevermind. But it wasn't -20F! Some of the people were so traumatized by the cold at the bottom that once they got to the top they just hung out in the coffee shop haha. Now that's cold. They just told me to take their camera and be off, and so I was because my phone was starting to freak out from the cold. I went to the very top of the mountain.....the view was awesome!!!

Here's a few pictures to get your mind wrapped around the place:

Note the difference in the trees at the bottom and the trees near the top

This picture bares no relevance to the story at hand except that it's just a darn good picture of me. I like it!

This gives you an idea of the amazing view from where you get off the ski lift at Koli

This is a picture from near the top of the mountain. The trees almost look fake, covered in snow clay or something. It seems like you could just go up to one of the trees and shake off all the snow, but really this snow is super stuck on the trees. I went up to touch a few of them, and the snow is just hard and caked on the tree completely frozen to the branches. What winter wonderland though, never thought I'd see that much snow in my life. 

I posted the above photos, courtesy of a good friend of mine, to show the extreme contrast between summer and winter in Koli. Crazy, but both season yield quite beautiful views. 

Here are some pictures of me at the top of the mountain, that orange coat never fails to steal the eyes away from even the most breathtaking of views.

This is a picture of the inside of one of these dang trees. You kinda wonder how the snow got into some of the tree's most private areas.....

Find the thing in this picture that doesn't belong hahaha








THAT WAS A JOKE PEOPLE! I'M A PERSON NOT A THING GEEZ

These trees were kinda huge even though they didn't look like it at first.

Note that my attire completely gives away how freaking cold it was that day. The face mask totally completes the outfit.

The view from the top

I love the slumping over trees, they add some sort of almost eerie personality sometimes haha

  And after you're done why not go for some urban sledding in front of the coffee shop??

Alright guys, that's all I've got for now. Until next time, and Winter is a good thing!!! In moderation. Peace!

Vorio Selas!!!

Now usually I'm not a big fan of writing a bunch of blog entries at once, which now I have three going, but what happened last night and yesterday was just too good to pass up. At this point I've completely given up on making these things chronological anyways.

So in other blogs I will talk about what it was like on the way to Lapland. Now I will turn to another event completely related to these other blogs, as it was the same day, but a bit different in nature. Anyways, hopefully I've fully confused you enough to make you want me to get on with it. That's my way of creating suspense, I just ramble until the person can't stand it anymore.

When we arrived at Lapland, it was sometime in the evening. I think about 8 or so. We got to our cabins and they ran us through how to use all the different appliances and such, namely the sauna. Me and my group got settled into the cabin rather nicely, cooking and eating a really good dinner together. Now, it had been something like 36 hours with 1-3 hours of sleep at this point because of the bus ride there. We were all exhausted. We thought maybe we can go check and see about the Northern Lights, but it was cloudy and everyone was tired so no go. Even though Gosia(Polish friend in cabin) kept insisting on going out to check, "I know there is something special with the sky." haha. I mean we all were hoping immensely to see them but it just wasn't happening with the clouds. Anyways, our pure exhaustion meant we wanted sauna, then sleeeeeep. Thing was, that our sauna just was kinda....not working. Everyone else was busting out of their cabins steaming just seeming relaxed all the while we were turning up our sauna and waiting 30 minutes....nothing happening. Changing the settings, nothing happening. I was not going to not go to the sauna after the gosh darn heck ride on the bus for like 18 hours though, I was determined.

By this time it was something like 1145-12, but luckily there was some leeway on when I would go to bed since the first activity was at 1130am the next day. I went around in my bathing suit(I had gotten ready for sauna before realizing it didn't work) and asked other cabins about it. Turns out you have to turn on the heat, then it works. Who would have known? The heat was on zero the whole time and we were just turning the timer. Sounds like one of those "forgot to plug it in" ideas doesn't it? Well actually not really, they told us not to touch that knob. It was only after desperation that we took matters into our own hands. It started smelling funny after we did that......but hey, the smell went away and the sauna worked.

At this point it's something like 1230 when it starts working, so we go in and sweat for a while, then, like the other cabins were doing, would time to time bust out of the cabin steaming and throwing snowballs and such. Then back in the sauna, nice relaxation. Then we decide to go back out into the snow one last time before turning in and going to bed. We go outside and in the snow and start a bit of a snow fight. I don't last long there cause that shit is cold. I was standing on the porch as Rebekka(from the faraway islands?) and Danai(from Greece) were snow fighting in front of the cabin. Rebekka pushes Danai down onto one of snowmounds beside the sidewalk on her back. VORIO SELAS!!!!!!!!! She says in Greek as her eyes get huge, she takes a gasp, and points at the sky. I run down off the porch and look up at the sky. The clouds had subsided and revealed amazing NORTHERN LIGHTS!!!!! The Aurora Borealis way up here in the Arctic Circle is like nothing I've ever seen or ever could have imagined!!!!!

I immediately started screaming and shouting as I looked and pointed! I had a very very seriously honest "double rainbow" moment. Not moment, like 2 hours. They were out of this world. When I say there is no way to express what I saw on this night, I have no way to express how much I mean that. They were huge, as if they were lower than the clouds. They sparkled, shifted, moved. Fast! They spun in circles and were bright as a light. You could see well even standing in the middle of the street light. The brightness of the moon and the stars was only secondary to how vibrant they made the sky. I just can't describe, they were huge! All the way across the sky and overhead. None of the cameras could get them!!!! The only person with a capable camera was inside! They were so bright one of less capable cameras actually was able to get them. I'll finish and post those pictures. The person with the capable camera got some pictures when they had gone down a bit. I will post those later. I wish these could show you what I saw, but this is what I have now. These pictures are seriously just nothing compared to what a good camera could do, which is just crap compared to what they are in real life. Google Northern Lights right now, do an image search. What you can see in those pictures is nothing nothing nothing compared to what it's like to see them in real life. They are brighter an better looking than how you think the would look while looking at pictures. Amazing.