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.

Alright guys, let's talk about the 800 pound goril......uh.....naked man in the room

So I will continue with my koli story shortly, but for now I just wanted to quickly blog about a unique experience I recently had in the Finnish sauna. First off, in Finland there is something like 3 million saunas for a population of 5 million people. The sauna is very simply an integral part of the culture here. If I'm not mistaken, sauna is originally a Finnish word that the rest of the world just adopted. So these people are the sauna original baby!

That being explained, in the housing arrangements they have a sauna that can be used at certain times of the month and week. You can either go to the housing people and pay 8 euros to reserve the sauna 1 hour out of every week, or just go to the sauna when it is regularly opened on Wednesdays. Now usually on Wednesdays in my living arrangement, girls can go from 6-8 and guys from 8-10. They separate girls and guys because Finnish people go to the sauna straight up naked. I suppose it kinda makes sense, I guess if I wanna relax to the full extent, course I gotta be naked? Well either way, to most exchange students that idea seems pretty daunting. Just keep your eyes looking above eye level!! some of them say. Sometimes I ask other exchange students if they go naked and they're just like whoa no way!!

So today(wednesday) I was invited to the sauna by my fellow American and also exchange student, Weston. He said that him and some exchange students would be doing a mixed sauna(clothes on, obviously) at 8pm and wanted to know if I would like to come along. I said well, sure why not. I hadn't yet been to the sauna in the housing arrangements, and I wanted to start going regularly since it's relaxing when there aren't a bunch of crazy water fiends in there. But in the back of my mind I thought, wait, isn't today Wednesday? Isn't the sauna open for -men- from 8-10? Well I just said eh they do this regularly and went along with it, cause apparently they do actually every wednesday try to have a mixed sauna.

So I go, it's quite nice. It was seriously nothing like the one I checked out when I went ice swimming. There was a small opening near the bottom of the doorway that allowed heat to actually escape if shit got real. When I entered it was more like a really really really warm room, no hyperventilating. It was this cold in part because the people were playing and throwing water on each other and opening and closing the door. Some people went and brought snow from outside and started spraying people with it just for the shock effect. But after a minute everyone calmed down and had nice sauna again. We threw some water on the  coals, a nice amount. It was very good, I like the sauna a lot. So we sit there a bit longer and have nice conversation with a few intervals of people getting crazy with the snow again but it's nothing as bad as crazy water fiends. I managed to stay peaceful the entire time.

So at one point we all are just sitting there talking and sweating when I see someone pass by the door out of the corner of my eye. Uh oh. In pops in a naked Finnish guy, our age too. He just kinda looks in with this slightly confused look on his face, then just goes for it and sits down. Now there is a lot of people in this sauna and it's not a big sauna. We had to make room for him whenever he came in. Even more over, I knew the guy!

One of the first weekends I got here and did not know the bus system, he and I both got left at the bus stop. We had a nice conversation and decided to just walk back together since we had discovered we lived in the same building from our pleasant conversation. It's an hour walk back, so we got to know each other pretty well. Since then we've had a couple more nice conversations on the bus and at bus stops. This guy was now naked sitting beside me in the sauna, and definitely feeling awkward because of a lot of male and female clothed exchange students.

It was also really funny, and really kinda not funny at the same time because I was sitting beside him on one of the benches in the sauna. Thing was that the benches in the sauna face each other. So I was having quite the fun time in my head watching peoples eyes as they were trying to have conversations. People would be talking then randomly glance down, I guess it's just in peoples nature I don't know why. It's not like these people were trying to sneak a peak, I feel like they all looked in spite of themselves. Girls, guys whoever hahaha. I mean I guess you just can't help it.

I tried to talk to him and get into a nice convo with him as not to make him feel so strange, but you know, we were the ones who should have felt strange. We were out of line, not him. How awful to make someone feel embarrassed within their own culture! So eventually everyone wanted to take a break and go out for a second, but I stayed in there with him. He expressed his embarrassment for being the only naked one at that point. I knew what I had to do. I just said here goes nothing, and got naked as well. Now good thing was the girls definitely weren't coming back in at this point, they decided they were done with one naked man I think. But the guys slowly trickled back in. Kinda strange also because I was with a group of people that I hadn't really formally met yet, because my friend just invited me to come with his friend group. Kind of a strange first impression. So they would come back in and you could see in their face the thought crossing their mind "Wait, what?!?! Two naked guys now?!"

So I just sat there naked with my bus stop friend and eventually I think the other guys caught on and then also got naked. It was actually better. Not nearly as bad as one would think. Surely it's difficult for us to rid ourselves of our cultural perceptions of what it means to be naked and what that implies, but by gosh, after just being in there with a few guys for 15 minutes.....it feels so....normal. That does it, I'm a nudest. Till next time, peace!

Trip to Koldi, really really Koldi: Part tangent

Whew poor video quality, it was so cold my phone started acting crazy!!

So hello again my friends! This little video is one I took while visiting a place called Koli. It was very freaking cold, hence the title, with the very cry your eyes out and vomit hilarious pun in the title: Koldi. But that's neither here nor there, I'll get to that later, for now let's be patient people.

So this video basically reminded me of a nice conversation I had with a couple Finnish friends the other day, and therefore it's time for a tangent out the get go. Finland has it's own version of Jackass. It's true, and the damn people are crazy as hell. Seriously, I have no idea how these people are alive. It's only like 4 people or something too, so no one avoids getting horrible pain inflicted on them. And really, they don't do anything that's really meant only to be funny per se. Like a lot of Jackass stuff is extremely risky and there's a likelyhood that the person will get hurt, but if not then whatever it is is often pretty funny and ironic. Like for instance this involves no one getting hurt really:

And this one is risky but people didn't have to get hurt necessarily:

I will agree that some of them are just straight up pain but not all of them. But every single Finnish Jackass I watched(called the dudesons) involved someone getting hurt haha. I guess there was one where they blew up a house and no one got hurt, anyways here's a taste:

Now this video is in Finnish so if you can't tell just from context clues what they're doing, they're testing a phone to see if it still works after being put through.....the elements? Well not the elements but you know what I mean. Don't you just love the smile the guy keeps on his face during the third trial? The guys are crazy haha.

And lastly, here's a preview of the dudesons air in the US. Heck, many of you might have already seen this stuff. Apparently there was a problem because it was offensive to Native Americans, which I can see that pretty readily. 


There's another really cool show my friends showed me called madventures, again I think this one aired in the US as well. It's basically two Finnish dudes running around to different places and doing the craziest stuff people do in that culture. Check it out:

Quite interesting I would say. Now as far as Finnish accents go, these are pretty strong ones. A lot of the younger people you meet here don't even have a trace of this accent. It's kinda scary really. But you will find some older people here and less younger people who actually carry this accent. Often the British accent a lot of them have is stronger than their Finnish accent, which is just silly and provoking of envy haha. 

Wow, I think this one is definitely my favorite. Roof jumping in Russia. I think this one is just hilarious because of the reaction after losing at rock, paper, scissors. "Vittu...vittu vittu vittu!" I think that is the F word equivalent in Finnish.  When he's standing on top of the building he's apparently saying "I'm f***ing afraid, I'm f***ing afraid" hahaha poor bastard. 


Alright well this has been a niiiice long tangent for ya. I will continue this blog later with the actually on topic part once I get all the photos loaded. Yeah that whole tell you what I've been doing thing, what a concept. Either way, stay tuned and in the mean time, check these programs out to learn ya a little somethin about Finnish shows! Peace!

Ice Swimming 2: The Water Fiends

Hello all, how's it going?



So when we last left our.....hero? Our story. When we last left off I had just taken a plunge not in the ice water(as was, for some reason, the objective), but into the deep ass snow. So anyways, my British friend Alex and I were walking over the bridge afterwords, getting closer to the ice swimming place. I suppose we had been walking from my apartment for about 30 minutes at this point. The bridge was over a nice iced lake, which had also a nice neighborhood right beside it, but other than that you could see mostly just forest from the top of the bridge which slightly elevated you above the trees as you walked over it. 

We walk past the bridge and eventually reach our destination, which consists of a sizable 2 story house looking structure(it's obviously for commercial purposes) on the right, a small rectangular extremely small 1 story house looking structure on the left, and straight ahead a concrete dock with railings and two steel stair cases at the end. People busting out of the Sauna(small house structure) in a bit a seeming rush, their bodies steaming like crazy. The steam followed them as the walked down the dock. I saw people go to the end of the dock and walk down the stairs, ....a couple seconds go by, then they come up the other stairs, bodies not really steaming anymore. I thought hmm wow this must not be so tough, I was expecting to hear shrieks and presumably Finnish curse words then they come running back down the dock begging for warmth.  Nope, they seemed pretty calm and collected so this was cool. Felt kind of weird though to see them walking around in bathing suits just 20 yards from where I was standing wearing a huge jacket, scarf, mittens, toboggan, thick lined pants, long underwear, etc.

We go inside, get registered, we look at the temp. it's -8 degrees F. Damn. And we're off, the rest of the crew(actually a lot of people, maybe 18-22) come in and we get changed. I'm wearing only my blue bathing suit as we walk outside. Immediately I feel my body ask me why the f*** I'm outside, and we begin to scurry quickly to the sauna. Now I've never been in a Finnish sauna before, and all the saunas I've been in, I've had more or less control of the temperature except for maybe in the gym when Brian would turn it all the way up. That bastard. But honestly, even Brian turning the temperature all the way up was absolutely nothing compared to this. There is a room right beside the sauna where you can wash your feet off before you go in, and really I thought that room was pretty toasty... There is a glass door separating the sauna from the foot wash room, I enter through the glass door and am immediately floored by a wall of heat. 


The first thing that goes is your ability to breath comfortably, then you immediately start sweating like a.....pig? Do pigs sweat a lot? Anyways, it was a lot and at first I'm just like wow I'm straight up out of here, but then I kinda calmed a little and had a seat. Mind you that all of this is going on in my head, really I just walked in and sat down. I observed all these notions in silence. So after about 30 seconds to a minute I actually start quite enjoying it. It was very nice, relaxing, really hot but eh that was kind of a good thing...............then came the water fiends. 


For those of you who don't know, which is probably none of you but let's not leave anyone out, ya sit in the sauna and when you feel like you haven't had enough punishment, you throw water on the coals that are heating the room. The coals are really freaking  hot, so the water instantly evaporates and heats up the room -and- increases the humidity. By gosh that's a double whammy! 

You use a spoon to throw the water on the coals much like the one in this picture of some of my friends also in a sauna here in Finland. For some reason that is completely beyond me, in this picture they have decided to use vodka instead. I wasn't there for this incident, as I got this photo off facebook, but I do hope everyone in this picture is still alive. So let us continue.

Actually no let's go on a complete tangent for a second, humidity matters soooo much more than I ever thought it did as far as making something hot or cold. I mean, I knew it mattered for the heat in terms of hot weather, but cold weather too so much! I mean it makes sense. It feel soooo much colder here when the humidity is up here, which because of the lakes, it's often up to 100%. 

Yeah so back to the story. So you throw water on the coals, and depending on how much you throw on there, it could get really, really, really really really hot. Everything in the sauna was just hunky dory until we got some really big Finnish dudes with tattoos come into the sauna with us...which was probably about 5 minutes after we got in there. I think they quickly realized we were international and decided they wanted to prove their Finnish might. Perhaps not though, perhaps they're just Finnish and are used to it and really like steam and pain. 

Pish!!! Pishh!!(sound it made when they threw water on the coals) Pish pish pish pishhhhhh!!!! It was absolutely ridiculously absurdly hot!! When we walked in there it was already 80 degrees centigrade. That's right, degrees centigrade. That's 176 degrees Fahrenheit. They just kept throwing that water on the coals. And you know, it started nice. Every time you throw a spoon of water on the coals it feels like someone put  something really hot on your back, and on your face. Mostly your face. At first it was us putting a spoon here and there on the coals, just to spice things up a bit. Then after they came in they immediately started throwing more than we did, probably just because they're used to it. 

That was uncomfortable, but then they went crazy. These two dudes just started a freaking water battle. Oh yeah??? Well I can throw 6 spoons on there at once! Oh yeah, I can throw 8 spoons on there at once!! Oh yeah?!?!! Well try 11 bitch!!

I was freaking out of there at this point, it was 100 degrees Centigrade, 212 degrees Fahrenheit, or better know as the boiling temperature of water!!! Luckily, you're supposed to get out at one point if you wanna go ice swimming, and at this point, I wanted to go ice swimming!! I popped out of there, steaming like crazy, outside was -8 but it felt good, didn't feel cold at all. So I walk down the dock, thinking oh yeah this is gonna be awesome I'm so hot right now, and by gosh those other people didn't make it seem like it was that bad. 

I got over there went down the stairs, got in up to my shoulders and waist....holy shit that's f***ing cold!! I shriek, curse, and run back to the sauna begging for warmth. Back in the sauna...It feels soooooooo gooooood to be back there. At least for the first 5 minutes, then the water fiends made it painful to breath again so I was back out heading towards the ice. The second time was not nearly as bad, this time I didn't just dip in and get out. This time i actually swam from one stair case to the other. You get out and you really can't feel your crotch, I'm sorry but you just can't. As you run back to the sauna like a baby you really can't feel halfway up your thighs to your lower abdomen. Of course, perhaps that's not a universal idea, I was just an unlucky one. Also I noticed that hands and toes go first, not just in the ice, but in the sauna. I noticed that when I'm in the sauna my hands are the first thing to get uncomfortably hot, and in the ice the first thing to get uncomfortably cold.

Eventually I went in and out of the ice like 7-10 times. Sounds like a lot, but it's mostly because of those water fiends. It got to the point where I would go in the sauna until they pish pish pish then I would just throw my arms up and get the heck out. Often times I would come back from the ice to all the internationals and a couple Finnish people pouring out of the sauna claiming that the water fiends were trying to kill them. 

It was also interesting coming out of the sauna, sometimes I would just go out of the sauna and just stand in the freezing cold. It was really nice. Honestly after you left the sauna you could just stand there in a bathing suit for about 10 minutes without feeling a bit cold. Anyways, here's a couple pictures of me after ice swimming:

Look at all that steam from the people taking my picture. I think I might have still been steaming too. Eventually I got to where I could be in there for something like 10 seconds before I latched onto the other ladder. My friend Alex had done it before and he just swam back and forth, crazy man.

And another one, absurd. But somehow fun.

After we were done I went to dry off and change in the changing room......except hold on......I didn't bring...a...uh......I didn't bring a towel. Hmm, this is an oversight. Everyone is just changing and getting naked in the mens changing room, and I'm just kinda standing there in the changing room like uhhhhh. All our stuff in in the changing room, and there is a door to a one person bathroom in the changing room. I grab my pants, and walk without much resolve into the bathroom. Yeah, I just dried off with my pants. That would have been a strange sight if I would have just been in the open in the changing room. The things are so thick that if you dry off with the outside of them, then the inside of them stays dry. I was getting ready to go to the upstairs of the building to enjoy some food and a birthday party anyways, aka not gonna be outside for a while, so I figured why not. 

So after this monstrously large blog entry, I leave you on that note. Till next time folks and watch out for....the water fiends!!!!!!