Something for the Weekend

Long gone is the December period of 3 hours of sunlight a day. Since the winter solstice, the days are getting longer at a noticeable rate - just over 7hrs of light today! It's also a lot warmer. Supposedly, January and February are the harshest months weather wise, with temperatures creeping up to -30 in some cases. However, this winter seems to be much much milder than usual, thankfully!

Just before Christmas we only really left the apartment to go to school (it was always dark and -18 at the warmest). However it's now much more manageable to be out and about, and the city looks beautiful; the clear blue skies and fresh sunshine are an amazing contrast to the 2 feet of snow that's accumulated on the ground. From this, we've decided we should get out and appreciate it more!

We're trying to find things to do each weekend, when we're free of school work and have the whole day to get around. Today we took a walk along the harbour - we hadn't visited since summer and it was crazy how different it looks now. The beach where we swam now coated in snow, and the lake frozen over - there was no differentiation between land and water anymore!

It was also amazing how many people were up and about doing outdoor activities. Finland is such a healthy country, and each season brings new sports to get involved in! Whole families were out cross-country skiing, ice skating, kite flying, sledging, and snowmobiling.

We crossed over a frozen part of Kallavesi, then got a coffee and doughnut inside a boat-cafe frozen into the lake. Here we discovered that ice skates were available to hire for 5€ an hour - that's next week's activity planned!