Today it was Reino's birthday! we went to Enontekiö (Hetta), to see the samis' museum. Enontekiö is right between Sweden and Norway! Here, it's fun, because all the streets' name are both written in finnish and in sami. The museum was quite interesting. I think that sami language looks a bit like icelandic, well at least for the letters and accents. but it also looks a bit like tcheck.
Today it was quite rainy and a bit more colder than the last few days, but I enjoy cold weather. there were a LOT more mosquitoes today as well. when we were walking on Juhannuspolku, we had to hide our faces not to be eaten alive!
We also went to Sweden for less than a minute. we just crossed the bridge near Muonio. haha! it was a funny idea that Reino had. well now I can say that I've been to Sweden, but I didn't visit it :P
We also went to this really deep lake called Pakasaivo. it's 90m deep! the view was really nice!
It was a rather long day, with all the car rides we had. When we went home, Outi and I cooked dinner for ourselves, and the parents went out for the evening to celebrate Reino's birthday. Reino told me that when his mom gave birth to him, she didn't have any idea for a name. so she decided to name him Reino, since July 16th is the "Reino" name day. In Finland, everyday has a few names matched to it.
after supper, I called Mikko (in Montreal) to ask for his address so I could send him a postal card, like he asked me. He was working, wich...

Today we got up aroung 9 so we could go climb mount Keimiö (Keimiötunturi). We had to take the car to go there. The mount was about 610m high (I'm sorry, I have no clue how tall it is in feet. all I know is my height in feet :P). In front of Keimiötunturi was Jerisjärvi. In Lapland, it's also quite warm; I was surprised, i admit. And the sun doesn't go down in summer(I already knew that).
Anyway.
Once we reached the top, we could see the small Keimiöjärvi (lake Keimiö). When we were climbing, i saw one reindeer! haha. The landscape was breathtaking. you really feel like you are at the end of the world, and it feels like you can actually see that the Earth is round. What a beautiful day!
After that, we went to Pallas hotelli, where we saw some reindeers too.
On our way back to Muonio, about 3 km from Sweden, we saw 3 reindeers on the road! It was funny to see them walking on the road not even scared to get hit by a car.

We again had sauna and went to sleep peacefully. oh, and I have to call back Wellu sometime soon!

Hei! today, I got up around 10h40, I took a shower (the lovely weirdo showers) and prepared my luggage, since we were going to Lapland by plane (Kittilä airport). It's really awesome that Suvi managed to find us some tickets a bit cheaper since we are "family". (she is working for Finnair).
I was also so surprised to see she speak well french! It's not a common language in Finland! but she went to a french high school. anyway! back to the family trip to Lapland.
The flight was leaving from Helsinki-Vantaa airport at 3h10 pm, and was about 1h10 long. We left the house around 2pm, and made this small joke about who would arrive first: the taxi, or Soile? finally Soile arrived before the taxi! We arrived at the airport around 2h30pm, it took 10 minutes to register our luggages and go through the metal detectors.
The flight went well, and I was seated next to a German guy who was funny and nice to talk to sometime. The food was really good as well!
Kittilä airport is really small. ahah espescially compared to Paris. Once we were there, we took our luggages and went to get our rental car (a silver wolkswagen) and left to Muonio (about 60 km North-West from Kittilä). We rent a cottage near Muonio. It's small, nice and cozy. And filled with these lovely mosquitoes. Not a big surprise for me. I'm used to them anyway. We have LOADS of them even in Montreal, in summer. Crazy.
One thing thats nice about Lapland, is that the sun never sets in summer....

Hei! so today, we are going back home to Helsinki. In the morning, I finished my "Parattiisisaaren vangit" book (by Arto Paasilinna. I really love this author's books, you should check him out!) (I read the book in french, but I prefered to write the original title of the book, in finnish). I went to the sauna to enjoy it one last time, as well as the lake! I took a small walk with Soile and Hambo (the german sheppard) and Reino and Outi picked us up on their way (in the car). When we arrived home, I decided to clean and reorganise my room, because it was starting to get messy. I don't have any nightable so all my small everyday stuff are spread all over the place. anyway. I went to check my emails afterward, when i was online on msn as well. I spoke a bit with Erkki, but he wasn't that much talkative, until and he asked me if I was in Finland at the moment, and well as you all know, i was. He then started writing like a madman in finnish, wich was actually quite funny. he asked where I was staying and since when I was there, and well when he learnt that I was in Helsinki since July 28th he was so bummed! he was there with the dudesons for about 5 days to film this small Mtv3 show! we went to the same places during the week, but we never saw each other. funny!

Henna came over again, and we all planned that friday, we go to a bar.

Today we went to Fiskars (yes, the very one scissors ), about 30km from Karjalohja. There was a flea market, and I bought thoses 2 old pins from winter war, one was a finnish flag and the other one was a small "armoirie" of the town of Helsinki (I have no clue how to say that in english.. but you know, this small "emblem" for each town? for exemple, Helsinki's "armoirie" is a small boat on a white sea and a blue sky?). Anyway. We also visited the Fiskars museum and the small local shops.
When we came back to the cottage, we ate supper and then we watched Aki Kaurismäki's "Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö" movie (the match factory girl). I really liked it! It's a really dark humor type of movie (I admit, I rather have a really dark type of humor.. I am really sarcastic and ironic.) anyway.
Did you know there are vipers in Finland? only one is dangerous. it's called "kyy" in finnish. It's actually really funny for me, because kyy is pronounced the same way as "cul" (in french) and cul means "*ss". so Outi and I were always laughing when we were telling each other "Watch out for the huge kyy hiding in the hay!" XD
but to come back to the serious subject about kyy. the smallest ones are the dangerous, because they are filled with poison. bigger ones have already used their poison so their bites are less poisonous than small ones (is that clear or do you want me to explain it a bit more to you? just write me on my page and i will explain it to you!
We again...