Right I've uploaded a bunch of pictures on Flickr and now I can start to tell you about my trip to Finland with my mom :D

I had just completed Wai-Con (a Japanese comic and animation convention) over the weekend and I was so tired from it because I hardly slept at all. Not a good idea since I was about to embark on a really long flight. Because I was so tired I hadn't accomplished much for the trip (such as packing) on the Monday and Tuesday. By the time the leaving day arrived I was really stressed out - I hadn't packed and my notes on where to go etc were all over the place. I was so stressed that I just cried lol and my mom had to help me pack my suitcase, I was incapable of doing anything but just sit there and watch. Then I got a hold of myself and organised my notes into a book and got other things ready. Luckily the day wasn't hot so I was able to wear warmish clothing to the airport. Once we got to the airport we had to wait awhile until we could check in and then we found out that one of our hand luggage was obese as well as one of the suitcases. We had to go to the side and shuffle everything around and finally our suitcases were allowed to be checked in and our hand luggage was a couple hundred grams overweight but they let that pass. As we went through the X-ray screening thing one of the people took my toothpaste - I had forgotten that it was over 100ml DX She was really horrible as well. We were juggling a backpack, a giant ragdoll for my cousin's daughter, 2 heavy coats, a shoulderbag each and a small rolling suitcase and we had our passports etc in our hands and she was hurrying us along to the x-ray machines like crazy and yelling at us and just throwing our stuff everywhere. At one point my mom didn't even know where her passport had dissapeared and it was a huge panic. But we finally got through with everything and started to bitch about what a hellish woman she was and wishing we could throw a chair at her head.

Then finally on Malaysian Airlines to go to Kuala Lumpur! We had seats riiiight at the back so we couldn't even recline and the little tv screen was so close it gave me a headache. But I really wanted to watch Hairspray so I had to ignore it. I had requested lactose free food for all the flights. The dinner they gave me was some spicy asian crap. I should have requested non-spicy food too cos I can't eat it. So we had to swap meals :P Then once we reached Kuala Lumpur, we got on KLM to go to Amsterdam. OMG it was like 12 hours long. The seats were super cramped. There was even less space for your legs than usual. The food they gave me was gross. But we finally arrived at Amsterdam after what seemed like forever and we had a good browse around the shops :D Very nice stuff! Then we had a shorter flight, about 2.5 hours to Helsinki, Finland.

Once we arrived in Helsinki I was in awe of how handsome all the guys working there were! They were all quite young unlike in Australia they are mostly old men or bitchy looking women. I thought we would have to open out suitcases etc in customs cos we had chocolate and candy and I had medication but they just waved us through and said it was alright :D My uncle Pentti was supposed to be picking us up at the airport but at first we couldn't find him. My mom had to go to the service counter for them to put out an announcement to find him. Then he found us and took us to the Helsinki main train station to have us pick up our FinnRail passes and seat reservations. Then we went to his apartment where his wife Hannele was waiting to feed us :D This was awesome cos then we didn't have to spend money for food! She even gave us more food for our journey up north to Rovaniemi. Pentti then took us back to the train station so we could catch our train. It was a real job getting on the train with all our crap, but we managed. Once the train got going my mom was looking at our money thinking to divide it between the two of us. But as she was counting she only counted about 500 euros. I started to go ballistic cos we were meant to have heaps more and we started to panic about where it was. Turns out she had tucked the rest into a slightly hidden pocket of her purse...I was so stressed out by this point that I started to cry (again, gosh I cry at everything). Then we went to bed as the train ride was about 12hours long and it was night time.

We reached Rovaniemi on the morning of the 21st and it was still very dark. I had a map of where our guesthouse was but it was still hard to distinguish which direction we had to go and because we had so much luggage we just got a taxi there. Once we had dumped our stuff it wasn't long before the people from Erasetti Safari came by to pick us up for our Reindeer ride to the husky farm :DD There was a family already in the van and after a while I realised their son was talking with an Australian accent! Later on we found out they were from Sydney...so random XD Once we got to the office we all (there was a bunch of other people too) got changed into proper ski jumpsuits and boots. Then we all piled onto the bus to take us to the reindeer's. It wasn't very cold. Rovaniemi is supposed to be about minus 25 to 30C at the time but because of global warming it was only about 0 to minus 5C with a small amount of snow. But that was good for us otherwise it would have been too cold! Once we got to the place we were all paired to go into the sleds. The reindeer's were so cute! They were quite small, I expected them to be a bit bigger.





They also pood a lot....and their poo looked like rabbit droppings! I tried to get a picture of it pooing but this was the closest thing I could get...



You can kinda see it coming out...lol
The ride was really nice, we had reindeer hides to warm us up (this is not a good ride if you are vegan!) and it was nice to take in the beautiful scenery.





The reindeer's took us to the husky farm. You could hear them before you saw them! It also smelled kinda doggy :P They were all so cute and excited to see us! We then went for a very short but exhilarating ride. I have a very short video of it, for some reason I couldn't get my video function on my camera to work properly so that's why it's only a few seconds long :P





After the ride we went into a little cottage and had some gingerbread cookies and warm berry juice. The guide then talked about the huskies and people asked questions. We had a look around the farm and patted some huskies :D







Then they took us back to the office and on the way there they gave us all Reindeer driving licenses! And then back to the guesthouse. We went to the supermarket to get some food then. Finnish supermarkets are so awesome! For many things they had a way better or larger selection of goods. Like in ice-cream they had all these wonderful flavours, even licorice taste! And another wonderful thing, Finland has anything lactose free or low in lactose. It was like a paradise for me! I could eat ice-cream, cheese, milk, whipped cream....so fabulous :DDD Australia seems like they are in the dark ages compared to Finland! All we have here is lactose free milk and thickened cream. The milk tastes really sweet cos of something to do with the lactose sugars being extracted. The lactose free milk in Finland tasted normal! It was a truly wonderful thing XD

Then we headed over to the Santa Village at the Arctic Circle :D I didn't go see Santa (people dressed up kinda scare me :P) but we looked around at the souvenir stores :D Later in the evening we went into the city to go eat at Lordi's Rocktaurant (NOTE: In case you don't know Lordi was the winner of Eurovision - a singing contest - in 2006, they are very popular cos it's the first time Finland has won the competition). We ordered a steak and a burger to share. It was delicious!





The interior was all decorated Lordi style :D







The next day we went into the city again to have a look around and do a bit of shopping :) On the way there, there was some cool looking graffiti around a construction area.











The sun never rose completely in the sky, it nearly always looked like the above photo.
After some shopping we headed back to guesthouse and checked out. The train station was just beyond the road (albeit downhill first) so we decided to walk there instead of wasting more money on a taxi. It was pretty difficult! My mom took the two suitcases and they were so heavy it took us about half an hour to get to the station. Normally it would be about a 5 minute walk! At the train station I saw a bird killing a mouse and then start to eat it :D I've never seen something like that before! When our train came we piled on and a nice man helped us put our suitcases (he must have been super strong!) on the overhead compartment :O We were left wondering how we would get them down once we reached our destination...

Ok I'm stopping here for the moment, I'm tired of typing I've been at the computer for about 4 hours uploading pics and doing this. I will continue another day, in the mean time you can go over to my Flickr by clicking any of the above photos and browsing the rest of the pictures :)