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.