Lapland Tour

From Dec. 4th - 7th, every Rotary exchange student in Finland was in Lapland for our annual "Lapland Tour" there. It all began with the bus ride on December 3rd. There were four buses traveling to Lapland, as there were around 140 students. Ryne (the other American in Porvoo) and I were the first on our bus. It left at 5:30 p.m., but we didn't get there until after 11 the next morning - almost 18 hours on a bus. It wasn't too bad other than the fact that I slept about 2 hours...we had to stop every hour or so to pick people up along the way. But there were lots of friends that I hadn't seen since our orientation camp in Karkku, so it was a really fun trip. When we finally arrived in Muonio, our destination, I got to see all of the other people from the other buses.

We first checked into our hotel, Harriniva (http://www.harriniva.fi/), which was really more than a hotel; it was sort of an outdoor winter sports center. After we got our rooms and unpacked, we headed straight off for the ski place - Olos-tunturi. There, we could cross-country ski or downhill ski/snowboard - I foolishly opted for downhill skiing. For those of you who don't know, Finland is flat - reallllyy flat. So this "big" downhill skiing hill was smaller than Hilltop in Anchorage - bummer, a bit boring. But I helped the people who had never skied before out a bit, so it wasn't too bad. The next day we could either carve ice sculptures or go downhilling again - I went back to Olos-tunturi but this time attempted snowboarding, which I'd never done before. It was a painful experience, but very much more entertaining than the previous day. After skiing we popped over the bridge to Sweden for about 5 minutes, just to say we'd been to Sweden, basically. We then had some free time back at Harriniva to sauna or hang out with friends.

That night we went to the school in Muonio for a program there. The local Muonio students had prepared songs, dances, and stage tricks to show us, so we in turn shared dances and songs and whatever we felt like from our home countries.

The next day the really Lappish things began. We visited a reindeer farm in Torassieppi, learned how the Finns and the Sami (the natives of Lapland) used them as pack and herd animals (learning about Sami traditional dress and culture* along the way), and got to practice lassoing reindeer (using wooden dummies, of course). One thing that was a bit different from Alaska is the fact that almost every reindeer in Lapland is owned by someone - there are no wild reindeer. The reindeer can wander free, but all have ear markings to indicate their owner. We then went back to Harriniva to go on a husky sled dog ride (nothing special there, coming from Alaska). In fact about a third of the dogs at Harriniva were Alaskan Huskies...that was a cool thing to hear. We also went on a snowshoeing adventure through the forest around Harriniva (very beautiful and Christmasy), and hopped in sledges pulled by reindeer for a ride.
(* The Sami culture is considered to be much like the Finnish, with one exception. The Finns are a very prompt and timely people (at least compared to the Americans), but the Sami don't have the same need for haste as the Finns. You can read more about dress and culture here, on the lovely Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people)

That day was independence day in Finland - so we had an independence day dinner at Harriniva. I was a bit dissapointed though, becuase the Rotary adults with us didn't tell us anything about the independence day. No history or anything - so you probably know as much as I do about it. We basically just had dinner. =(

After dinner we had our own program in Harriniva. The high point of that night was that a Sami man came and sang us four Sami songs...they were really cool. If I had to describe them, I'd say they kind of had a soft whistling sound, like the wind...the whole sound was very natural and somehow beautifully pagan. The told of life in Lapland, and there were some songs about the wind and nature, and some were love stories.

And then we began the bus trip back - with one stop in Rovaniemi. In Rovaniemi (a city on the Arctic Circle) you can find the real Finnish Santa Claus. There was a whole Christmas village there, complete with shops and a post office. We poked around for a bit, then waited in line to meet Santa. We were led into a room where Santa was sitting on a big chair. We sat around him, told him what we wanted for Christmas, and got a photo with him. Then back to the bus, and back to Porvoo. I arrived there at 6 a.m. running on one hour of sleep, so I decided not to go to school.

Overall the Lapland trip was awesome. Some of the things (snow, reindeer, huskies) weren't so exciting for me as for some others, but there was still a lot of cultural things there (not to mention 140 friends) that kept the whole trip interesting. Also, I had never been above the Artic Circle so deep into winter - the sun never rose while we were there; that was something new for me. Amazing trip altogether :D.