Month 4

It snowed today. Though it didn't last a day, it still snowed. Which means fall is over and winter is officially moving on in. It will be a great winter here getting to see Santa and Lappland and just having a good time experiencing the year here. This past week I've taken a course in school which focuses on recording music. I've never had so much fun with music before. I spent all of 8 hours in the studio just messing around with recordings with my friends. It might be something I will look at when I think about a possible career. This weekend was the district meeting of district 1410, the best district in Finland. I had a great time and got to go to sauna and jump into the below freezing lake after. The lake wasn't frozen but it likely could have cause it was really really cold. I am excited to jump in when it is totally frozen over. The snow is all gone now. It got really warm. They say it won't snow again until January which sucks cause its not christmas without snow. It's called White Christmas for a reason. I got to go to Tampere, a city up north from Turku, to visit my friend who came to America as an exchange student last year. We played pool and hung out with a bunch of her friends and it was a really fun time. Her sister gave me some music pieces for me to teach myself how to play the piano. I am trying to be able to read notes this year sense it is a skill I have forgotten. Hopefully I will be able to record some of my original songs in the school this year and maybe make a cd. That would be really cool. We are going to Lappland now so we can go skiing and see the real Santa and his house. This will be a ton of fun I can't wait. I got to see my first reindeer in the ciy today. it was a lot like a regular deer except it had fuzzy antlers and was a lot bigger. So we went to Lappland. It was without a doubt my favorite part of Finland so far. It was a really long bus ride there but it was definately worth it. I was really happy that there was snow because my city doesn't have any yet. Hopefully we will soon. When we got there we got to go snowboarding at this local mountain. It wasn't very big but it was still a lot of fun. I met heaps of cool people there. The Australians have gotten me saying some of the Aussie words like heaps, cheers, no worries, and fair dinkum. I got to see my first reindeer. They were really cool. I got to go on a dog sled ride which was great. Definately heap loads of fun. We also did a reindeer ride but that wasn't as much funn. After the reindeer ride we took snow shoes back home. That was fun. We got to listen to a traditional Saame person sing songs which was super mad. It was really peaceful and something I would like to hear again someday. We then have the gift giving which was great and sad at the same time cause now the oldies are less than 2 months until they leave. I was given a guitar by Ashley Bujeya from Australia. I will keep it safe and play it everyday. Hopefully I'll see her along with all the other oldies when I visit Australia which I plan to do for senior spring break and after I graduate. We then packed up our things and headed off to Santa's house. We had to buy a picture of us with Santa but none of us wanted to do that. So after when we were watching a video of us going into Santa's room, I took a picture of us with Santa on the tv screen. Sneaky me. We then went to a nice restaurant and had our last meal. We said our many tearful goodbyes and headed home. It was definately the best weekend of my exchange so far. I had my first traditional Finnish ballroom dance lesson today. That waws fun and interesting at the same time. It should be fun to see how I do. Christmas is coming soon. My next post will be after New Years. Hope you enjoyed this.