Farewell to Finland, Hello USA

Well, I've been back in the US for about 5 days now. It's taken a few days for me to adjust and to get back into the normal routine again. Let's be honest though, throwing off those scarves, gloves, hats, and coats was the easy part! I stayed in Kansas City with my parents for 3 days, and now I'm back in Utah to finish out the last two weeks until graduation.  I don't really have much to do for that, just meeting with teachers, handing in paperwork, and of course partying with friends!

Sidenote: Reunion with my best friend happened today! I really don't have enough words to say how much I missed this girl! We skyped very often, which I definitely needed. But nothing tops hanging out in person. So this was an epic reunion!

she packed us a cute picnic lunch and we shopped, ate, and talked for hours! It was wonderful!

So. The rest of this post is a farewell post to Finland, my trip to Estonia/Helsinki, and last feelings I had before I left.

Last Thursday, April 3, Leena and I left Savonlinna to spend my last weekend in Helsinki. Packing up was really difficult, I had forgotten how much stuff I brought along. Things that I never needed, and regretted bringing (cough hairdryer, straightener, so much clothes...) We ended up taking the bus to Helsinki instead of the train because of my luggage. It was about a 3.5 hour trip through the beautiful countryside of Finland. I spent my time sleeping and reading Seven Brothers, one of the best (and first) books written in Finnish about 7 brothers growing up in the forest of Finland around the 1800s. Since Finland was part of Sweden for a long time, Swedish was the language of education. Even though people spoke Finnish, it wasn't used in literature or academics at all. This book was a revolutionary of its time.

This was pretty much the view the entire time :)

The bus dropped us off in the middle of Helsinki, after which we had to walk about 15 minutes (with luggage) to the flat that Leena has there. It was small but cozy. She lived there for a time with her kids when she was studying for her specialization in Child Psychiatry (don't quote me on that I'm not sure if it's right). It's called the Tiger's Nest. :) It has orange and red walls. And chandeliers. And a sauna in the basement.

Friday we took a trip across the waters to Estonia! I was excited to see another city/country. We have some family friends who are from Estonia, and so I was happy to visit there to tell them that I traveled all the way to Europe to see Estonia!

At the port of entry-they didn't even check passports!

Apparently Tallinn it's one of Europe's best preserved medieval cities. (I am skeptic of that because I've seen some medieval cities in Spain...wait am I becoming a travel snob?? SO sorry, I take it all back.)

Spain or Estonia???

This one is Spain!

Anyway, it does have a beautiful skyline, cobblestone streets, cathedrals, and old buildings.

Outside the English embassy....I didn't see a US one.

 I loved the feel of the town! I have this thing with history. I love it. I love thinking about who lived before and how, and I love imagining what life could have been like on those same streets hundreds of years before.

The Orthodox Cathedral, built when Estonia became part of the Soviet Union

The town square

Estonia uses the Euro, too, so it was easy to buy lots of things :) 

Actually, I only bought three or so things....the rest were gifts that Leena bought for people!

I also loved the trip over and back. The cruise ship that took us over there was really exciting!

I had never been on one before and I just loved the idea of it.

 I also loved the buffet....

Saturday, I spent most of the day walking around Helsinki and seeing the sights.

Monument built to the national composer, Sibelious. (Who wrote the national anthem)

A Lutheran church built inside a rock!

I stopped by a few churches, the National History Museum, went into some shops, walked all around until I was beat.

National History Museum

The city's big, Lutheran Cathedral

The Orthodox Cathedral

Ok. Headquarters of Finland's best chocolate!!

I really loved Helsinki. More people spoke English there, and I felt like I was more able to get around by myself. There were so many fun shops to see and things to go do, that I loved it! Sometime in my life I would love to live in a big city for awhile. I'm sorry but I'm not sure Kansas City counts...I'm thinking more like Boston, NYC, Philadelphia...awesome.

Sunday we spent the afternoon with some friends in Helsinki and enjoyed being in each other's company before I had to leave. I asked Leena if she was ready to get back to her normal life (without an extra person in her house), and she just leaned over, patted my cheek, and said that she would miss me.

Monday morning we left for the airport at 4:30 for my early morning flight. Leena came with me, stayed as I checked my bags, and watched as I went through security. It was a bittersweet moment, knowing how much I love that lady but not knowing when the next I will see her again. It was hard, nostalgic and sad.

I have loved learning about Finland, about the culture, language, and getting to know the Finns. Clinical hours were hard, but I learned so much about global nursing and crossing those cultural boundaries. I learned to love in a different way that I have before. I have fond memories of sauna, ice skating, movie nights, swimming, baking, traveling, laughing, and crying with Leena. I feel like she is part of my family now, and I know that I want to visit her again.

Those times. They were fun. They were sweet. They were the best. 

Thanks so much to everyone who has read my stories, followed my adventures, supported me in the hard times, encouraged me to go and keep persevering. This has been a trip of a lifetime. I feel so much more confidence in myself and the things that I can achieve. I'm closing this last chapter of my nursing school, and I so look forward to the next. Fair warning, I will probably keep blogging! So stay tuned!

Much love,
Melanie

Exploring Lapland

For my two day trip to Lapland, I had three goals.
1. See Santa Claus and his reindeer.
2. Eat reindeer.
3. See the Northern Lights.

Three goals aren't that much to ask for, right??? Well, I was able to do the first 2 but the Northern Lights did not happen unfortunately. It was too cloudy and rainy/snowy while we were there. But, we had a great time together and had lots of laughs.

I went with my two Hungarian friends Zofie and Eva. They are both studying nursing and graduate this spring, so we can all relate :)

The trip started with our 16 hour train trip. You read that right. There was not a direct connection from Savonlinna, so we had to go down to Helsinki (almost 4 hours) before catching the night train up north. Since we are poor college students and were backpacking, we decided not to pay the extra 100 euros to get a bed, but instead we decided to sleep on the regular ole train seats. That's fine. Except they didn't turn down the lights at all. We came into Rovaniemi at about 8am. Nothing was open, except McDonald's so that's where we started haha.

Next stop Santa Claus Village. We rode the 15 min busride and made it there at about 11. Seeing Santa was the first thing we had to do.

There weren't that many people there so we made it in pretty quick. The line actually reminded me a bit of a line at Disney World or something, you know with the lights down low, music playing, and lines wrapping all over the place. Turns out Santa can speak many different languages. He just waited to see what language we used and then spoke that. He speaks English very well :) And I heard Chinese for the lady in front of us. An elf let us into Santa's office and we chatted for about a minute and then took a picture and left. We didn't even have time to tell him what we wanted for Christmas :( Anyway, we bought that picture, so it will be posted sometime next week once we scan it.

Here's what Santa's Village actually looks like:

Just so you know, I'm really pointing at NewYork, the only US city there. 

Glögi. A traditional winter spiced drink. Also my favorite. 

Santa's Post Office

Today's mail for Santa.

One of my favorite things that we did was the husky ride. There were 13 dogs pulling the sled, and the sun came out just in time for our ride. The dogs go so fast, and apparently they love it! It's like playing for them. Unfortunately (for the dogs) the weather was too warm. They like it to be in the negatives Celsius and it was only at freezing. We had such a good time though. Check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn_mIcs-5os&feature=youtu.be

In the afternoon we explored an ice hotel that is one big igloo and the bed frames made from ice sculptures. We had fun posing there and speculating how cold it would be to sleep there. But the best part was outside the hotel.

 A huge snow slide that we rode down on intertubes! SO MUCH FUN! We tried it out everyway, individually, linked arms. I ended up going backward and losing my hat.

Watch us scream like little kids going down the slide here :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5agcw6LvpgU&feature=youtu.be

We spent a good amount of time there and would have stayed longer but the Santa Village was closing at 5 and we still had to ride our reindeer. I think reindeer could be fast, but ours was actually really slow...like a walking horse. But I'm glad to say that we did it, and I enjoyed singing jingle bells even though nobody else knew the words :)

We were so tired that evening that we just went back to the hotel, watched a movie, and waited for the Northern Lights. Every hour we checked the clouds, but it was too rainy, so we saw nothing.

The second day we had less planned. We went to a museum (I know, how cultured!) We wandered around for a while just looking at the stuff. Most of it was about the native Sami People and talked about living in the Artic Circle. There was also a movie about the Northern Lights. Let's be honest, that was my main motivation for going to this museum.

We spent the rest of the day looking at souvineer shops and around town. We explored the walkway down by the river and basically discovered that apart from Santa Claus and winter sports (which is hard when the snow is melting), there's not much to do in Rovaniemi. That evening we went out for our special dinner. We had packed food for the whole trip, trying to keep the cost low, but Leena sent some money with me to treat us to a nice sit down dinner at the end. We all ended up eating sauteed reindeer and mashed potatoes, which was so good. It didn't taste different from beef, except maybe it had more flavor.

We spent one more hour walking down by the river with hopes of seeing the lights. Even though the clouds were clearing out, there wasn't any Aurora activity :( That's ok though. Last night, I spent about 3 hours in the tower, on my computer, and on the balcony trying to see them here. There was a huge spike in activity, but we had clouds here, too. It gives me hope though. As soon as clouds clear out I might be able to see them before I leave. And THEN I could leave and feel like I've done all I wanted to see. Just Kidding. Kind of.

I'm so glad we took the few days off to see Santa Claus. Even though it was such a long train ride, we had a great time!! I loved that in Rovaniemi, Christmas happens all year long!