Lapland, part 2

After the dog sledding, we took a snowmobile ride over to a small hut and some reindeer sleighs. My camera was still dead at that point, but again my friends got pictures, so its all good. We all got a short round, and the reindeer pulling our sleigh was going crazy I'm thinking because it's antlers hadn't shed their velvet yet. They're definitely not like horses though, they are a lot more wild, and spooked really easily. It was a lot of fun though :)

After we went on the sleigh ride, we snowshoed back to the hotel and ate lunch. I grabbed some more batteries. Then we went to a nature center on the outskirts of Muonio.

All of the nature there was amazing. The snow was practically untouched, and it made everything not seem so dark in the Finnish winter. Everything was always a little bluish.

We left the nature center after watching a quick documentary about Lapland, and went next to the reindeer farm.

An old lappish woman gave us a presentation about reindeer herders with the help of a translator. She (on the right) is dressed in traditional Sami (similar to native americans) attire, and Anna (another exchange student) is wearing the 'reindeer princess' clothes. All over the walls in the cabin were tools reindeer herders used.

We went outside after talking with her to feed the reindeer lichen, which they eat the most of. They also eat mushrooms in autumn before winter to fatten up. I really don't know what was appealing about the lichen, it was cold and covered in snow, but the reindeer ate it up like it was chocolate.

There was only about ten reindeer in the pen we were feeding because most are still out in the forest. All reindeer are free range, so we saw a lot of small reindeer groups in the forest while we were on the bus. The herders notch their ears with specific markings to tell which reindeer is whose.

We left after visiting inside an old hotel on the same farm, and said goodbye to our oldies (the Australians, Kiwis, and South Africans that came last January) that are going back home in a couple of weeks. Afterwards we had a dance party (haha), then went to bed.

Today we went to Santa's Village, but I didn't get another picture because I've already been there. Instead I bought a couple more pins for my blazer :3

Well, hopefully that wasn't too boring to read. Another update soon, probably, because I'm moving to my next host family this weekend :D

Oh, and sorry about the quality of the pictures. Right now it gets light around 10 and dark at 4 in Kemi, and Muonio was even darker. I'm pretty sure the reindeer were blinded by the amount of flash going around.