TEMPORARY INSANITY

Once again I greet you all with intensified envy because you all get to see the sun on a regular basis whereas I, on the other hand, DON’T! It’s not bright until about 10am and then pitch black by 3pm in the afternoon. Are you people trying to send me to the loony bin? I’ve found myself having in-depth conversations with.......myself. I think I ought to see a doctor about that.

CHRISTMAS AND LAPLAND

For the Christmas, I’m still not sure what it was that I ate, but I tried my best to SMILE while I swallowed raw fish as if it was very tasty. Those acting skills DO come in handy when you have to compliment on how “lovely” the food tastes. Well, that’s enough complaining for one day. I don’t want to seem as if I hate Finland, or I’m not enjoying myself because I had a BLAST in Lapland – It’s been the highlight of my year so far. Along with one hundred and thirty other exchange students from all over Finland and Estonia in –30° C weather I spent more than a day, in total, on a bus. It was a 14-hour drive from Turku to Levi in Lapland. I don’t know what was more entertaining, the Brazilians that never stopped talking or the Australians and Canadians fighting for 2 hours over whether or not to play Michael Jackson or Queen...Michael won in the end due to some persuasion by a particular Bahamian.

I went sledding again even after my accident the first time around. It was great the second time around. There was only snow, no trees or iron poles around for me to crash into. I went with, Holly, a girl from L.A., and we saw this really, really steep hill – if that hill were any steeper it’d be a wall – we looked at each other and knew exactly what the other was thinking. So she said, “Let’s go for it!” We hiked up to the top along the trees and only until I got to the very top, did I notice how dangerous it was. We got into the sled regardless, and crossed our fingers. At the last minute I reconsidered and started screaming at Holly, “No! No! I’m gonna wet my pants if we go down. Please!” But it was too late we had already tipped over the edge and snow was everywhere. I couldn’t steer and even though there were no trees around for us to hit, there was a building at the very bottom of the hill. I managed to clear the snow from my eyes in time to avoid the building by just a few feet. It was so funny that we rolled over in knee-deep snow laughing so hard that tears came out of our eyes. It was hilarious! The hill was perfectly and evenly covered in snow when we first saw it, now there was a huge clearance so deep you could see the grass beneath it. We wrote our names next to it so when anyone walked by it and asked, “I wonder who did that?” They’ll know exactly who: Olivia and Holly!

Later we all went to see the REAL SANTA. He was pretty cool – he actually KNEW where the Bahamas was situated. I was impressed. Then I saw his reindeer even went for a ride with one of them, and took a picture with Santa. My group got to lasso reindeer, and I was the only one who got the lasso around the antlers! So I had an awesome time there!!! And I guess that was my Christmas present.