Happy New Year! Sorry I haven't sent a report for the fourth month.
I've been busy with the holidays and all. So I have been here now for
over five months, including over Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New
Years, and my birthday. December was fun, it started off with the
Rotary trip to Lapland with 150 other exchange students. The trip was
certainly unforgettable, and because my closest friend from orientation
camp couldn't go, I had to branch off more and I made many more exchange
student friends. On the Lapland tour we stayed in Harriniva in Muonio,
and on the first two days we went skiing and snowboarding at Olos. I had
never skiied or snowboarded before so my first skiing experience
happened in the Arctic Circle in Finland. The next day we went on sled
dog and reindeer sled "safaris" which were awesome. Later that day we
went to the Pallas preserve nature center and museum. The next day on
the way home we stopped in Santa's Village in Rovaniemi.
December passed pretty quickly, although I was quite
homesick up until like 2 days before Christmas, when I realized that
even if I were to try to get home I wouldn't be able to make it back in
time for Christmas. Christmas Eve with my host family was fun, we had
the traditional ham and smoked and raw salmon, and also moose. The food
was really nice and after the dinner Joulupukki (Santa Claus) came to
drop off Christmas presents. The next day we had Christmas leftovers for
dinner and didn't do anything really on Christmas day. I spent a lot of
time with my friends during break and New Years. I think New Years is
celebrated in basically the same way that it is celebrated in New York
and all over the world. The rest of break I spent a lot of time with my
friends and then on my birthday my host family threw me a party. All my
host families were there which means my best friend Sarah was there and
then she slept over that night. It was really nice, everybody sang to me
in Finnish and English and the cake we made was delicious.
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