April 21st Spring in Finland

I've been having so much fun here since my last blog post! I have taken a second trip up to Lapland in Northern Finland, I have been skiing a few times but mainly I have just been enjoying the presence of the sun! For almost 4 months I saw the sun only a handful of times, and now it is out and shining every day!! I really did not realize how important the sun is to my over all mood until it came back out and put a big smile on my face! One thing I was missing from home was all the cool places I knew of to relax and watch the sunset, so I started going on adventures to find places like that here. As you can see I found a good one overlooking the castle in my town. I also was privileged enough to get to see the Aurora Borealis of Lapland, or the Northern Lights.

My Spring Break!

While everyone else was soaking up rays in some tropical "paradise" I was hanging out with my great host family and enjoying mother nature at her finest, deep in the Arctic Circle! We were all staying at my host family's cottage, which is almost at the top of Finland! Look on a map before you doubt how gnarly that is! I was relaxing and taking as much in as possible, going for walks each day and exploring as much as possible. One of the days we drove to visit my mother land, Norway. Unfortunately it was the only cloudy day we had on our entire trip, but we made it a good time! It was weird to think that at any given time I could be running into an aunt or uncle or cousin! Another day while we were there we went to a reindeer farm. That was the second time I have visited a reindeer farm but it was just as interesting as the first. One of the most memorable things I was able to do on my spring break arctic adventure was hold a wolf dog puppy! I dont know what it was about the little fella but I think knowing that one day he is gonna be a huge meat eating machine was pretty cool. Wolves are my favorite animals so to hold a little wolf dog pup was truly remarkable for me! Besides holding the baby beast, the northern lights I was lucky enough to see was my favorite part of the trip! We first saw them early in the evening and they were pretty remarkable, then we kinda stopped checking on them and went to bed. In the night I had to tend to some business outside cause there was no toilet in the cabin and boy was that a surprise! After finding a perfect tree that needed watering I realized it was really bright outside for being 3 in the morning and I looked up and saw the most colors I have ever seen in the sky! No picture can do them justice! It was truly being in the right place at the right time, I ran inside grabbed my camera and snapped that picture and a few minutes passed and they were back to just green lights. What was so crazy about them was I could actually hear them, there was a buzzing sound along with a kind of ocean wave sound. It was an out of this world experience!

I am heading to St. Petersburg, Russia in a few days so ill be sure to post about all the happenings there. Unfortunately my adventures here in Finland a dwindling, which makes me sad. I have learned more than any book could ever teach me here, it has been an inspirational and eye opening experience to live here. It is not over yet though, so until my next blog

One Love
Be Safe
Enjoy Today
Smile Often