note that we are really really really far north of the arctic circle. luckily when we got to kiruna the weather was great - it was sunny and amazing! we started with a trip to a large iron mine in kiruna... other than tourism the mine is a major source of employment in swedish lappland. the tour was interesting and we learned that because the mine had become so deep they now are in the process of moving the entire town!
after the mine we grabbed lunch and headed for the ice hotel! i had been looking forward to the ice hotel ever since i had watched the 2 hour discovery special... now you expect it to be like arctic tundra up there but really it was just a lot of woods with snow and rivers. the ice hotel was built along the river that they harvest all the ice from... apparently real ice from a river is a lot more clear than fake ice that is just frozen still water so they prefer that for building the hotel... it was really cool! sadly the power was out at the hotel so it was hard to see in a lot of the rooms, but i still took a lot of pictures and you can get the drift :)
we then drove another two and a half hours to the forest hotel which is where we would be staying for the weekend... it was very cute - bright red building set against the pretty white snow... we had a dinner buffet and got outfitted with our awesome snowsuits and CRAZY think boots, hats and mittens
the next morning we had what i definitely viewed to be the highlight of the weekend - DOGSLEDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we were paired up and given a 1 minute tutorial on how to break and then were sent off on our own sleds with 5 very adorable and very loud dogs... it was so amazing and serene being out on the river with the dogs and mushing them was really fun... i was the first one to drive and ended up getting to drive for basically the whole time... which was awesome - i would do another hour of that any day.
after dogsledding we went skiing - cross country skiing - with our huge snowsuits and gynormous boots on we strapped on wooden army skis that looked like they were from the 1920s it was pretty fun...
after a long day outside we had another great dinner - this time reindeer and i tuckered out early... on sunday a bunch of people went to the reindeer farm... but i decided just to stay back and got to sit by the fire read all the wonderful american magazines that my mom brought for me and talk to some of the other exchange students which i don't get to do as often as i like since i don't live in the dorm with most of them. we ended up having a really interesting chat about healthcare with a student from canada and germany who both HATE their countries' universal healthcare programs... anyhow, nothing like debating healthcare on a sunday morning :)
sunday afternoon we went ice fishing... we drilled our own holes and everything! went to bed very early sun night because we had a 6am flight monday morning and we had to leave the hotel at 2:30am to get to the airport on time!
one of the most interesting things was at the airport no one ever checked our id - at all - ever - not when we got our tickets, not when we went through security, not when we boarded the plane... CRAZY... can't imagine that happening in the US, guess it really is much safer in sweden :)
anyhow i got back on monday EXHAUSTED and decided to cancel my trip to oslo that i was going to take this week... i have just been traveling sooo much and still have so much traveling ahead of me that i didn't feel like i really needed another trip... but lappland was great and i am very glad i went - must see for anyone who comes to sweden and has the time
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