Yeah!! Like finally, after the 1.5 hours plane flight, we finally reached Ivalo!!! That is where everywhere is just snow snow snow, even at the doorsteps of shops/warm areas, which then becomes quite a big threat. :P The moment we step into such warm areas, either our shoes, including the sole, is covered with snow so its slippery, or previous people who have walked in and the snow have falled off at the doorstep, have melted and made the place to be slippery! Before the flight, i didnt know that we could check in ourselves! well like printing out the baggage slip and stuff like so!
For once i feel like an airport staff :3 though seriously we still ended up queueing and having the weigh the baggages as the usual check in counter, so i dont know whats the use of this. O.o OH YES! btw, the airport is really small, with only a few check in counters! unlike Singapore's terminal, whereby we have all those massive check in lanes, Helsinki's airport only has like one of those lanes of check in counters. :D quite pathetic huh and they're an international airport!!! but then again they dont need so many like us ^.^







Because we are all going 250km into the artic circle, it's a good idea to put on something warmer! like a winter jacket, with 2 layers of clothing! (y) fyi, the first layer i am wearing is heatech. and also, i got so LAZY to change clothes, that this pretty much became my clothes for the rest of the trip. *condemned* HAHA











The whole airport is pretty small, but you can see how it's really getting all so icy and snowy! :D


Also, in the terminal, they have these charging stations for you right at the seats of your boarding gate, so yes when you are travelling around europe, i guess you can bring your charger wherever you go! on a side note, you should bring a portable charger just in case your phone runs out of juice in the cold weather. :P friends have always told me that their phones die a lot faster in cold weather. It's true for my camera battery! from three bars (full batt) drop to one bar, or sometimes its just dead. but once you go into a warm area, tadaaaa it magically recharges!! *applause* however, my Xperia Z battery didnt deplete at all though! weird huh?






Also, you can bring pets wherever you go! like shopping malls, dont know about restaurants, but even the airport allows em! though i have no idea where the dog goes when you actually board the plane. Overhead compartment anyone? :)













 upon touching down on Ivalo, it was really such a unique experience!! you see,
 The runway is snow O.o

So is the place where the plane stopped (seriously its like some drop off point like that) yes thats the airport. or rather THAT'S ALL THERE IS TO THE AIRPORT

 The walk to the airport is also in snow... O.o

Finnair! oops so is this covered in snow~

Here too!! ^^ my smile looks horrible but its acceptable for a weird person like me!

 No snow here! But yeah! this is pretty much all there is to the airport, its quite small!! VERY small, no shops, no staff inside the airport at all. no bag checks.

only the reindeer heads were there to accompany us! photobomb!!
That's Nick's dad by the way. :3 Nick is a friend that i made friends with on this trip! wowow what awesome english there. haha i befriended a whole bunch of awesome friends!! :DD hmmm let me find their photo in instagram alright?
AHHHHH i dont really know the younger ones ^^ so yeah just the older ones.. :P haha they took this photo as they left for Singapore, while my family carried on into sweden, then to the *droool* ice hotel!

On the bus to our ice igloo, we decided to play cards! you know, poker cards and monopoly deal cards always save your day man, because you can always use them to bond together and chit chat! :D Then bus rides, like this one hour bus ride wouldnt be as boring!

aaaaand we're here! As the glass igloo is pretty puny with limited facilities, you cant really bathe or shit or pee in the ice igloo because of the bright spotlight that... presents yourself as a silhouette to the public. HAHA bad day to take a bath man!! plus, with the cold weather and not-so-warm glass igloo, its kinda hard to bathe... especially with a squeezy is that even a toilet... or out in your room because there's absolutely no privacy! unless you choose to prone/lie down on the floor to wear your stuff. so nope nope! not possibru.

the snow here is quite thick! if they dont shovel away the snow from the pavements, though there isnt really any pavement as everything is just snow, it would look something like this:



Ankle-deep?







Knee-deep! cant really see my shoe anymore eh>? snow covered shoes ftw!! seriously i am so so missing the snow now D:

 This is the first glimpse of the glass igloo, (i keep wanting to say ice igloo!!!)
 Hehe pretty cute huh! they arent really that big, plus you have to bend down whenever you want to enter the igloo! but before we headed to our igloos, had to walk some distance for dinner at the Celebration House! oh yes, when you're overseas at a place like this, WIFI = HEAVEN.
As you can see, its snowing really little! :P
 Ack backache!! guess ive been sitting in front of the computer for too long. Why do i mostly use my two index fingers to type....does anyone else do that?? (desperately trying to use the other fingers) its like my index fingers feel overused. hope they dont stage a coup of any sort!


Ladies and gentlemen, what you see here....are my fats. NEXT.

The celebration house is pretty sweet!! as you can see from all the decor :3 and the reindeer horns chandelliers! oh where can you ever find those?!?!?! (wanted to say where art thou but yeah) SO KEWLL they are made of many reindeer horns intertwined together! sounds kinda evil that they slaughter the reindeers for their horns eh? but do you know that they actually SHED their horns every year?? after i heard that, i have a much less violent impression of Finnish people. hehe.




You see what the lights in the celebration house do>! Now your photos will always change colour! Ever changing colours lmao.

















Ah but what's a meal without a candlelight in Finland eh? :) they use LOTS of candles in Finland! wherever you go, its either the seven candle lampstand (pardon me if there's a proper word for it) or simple candles for your meals or just about anywhere! except the toilet. havent seen any there man!! and we pay $2 for toilets! well that's for sweden, not finland. Finland toilets? FREE.
 Wohoo! now it's green! Ah this is pretty nice food, though i have no idea what they call it :P even though i am not really a friend of vege, but because it goes well together with the sauce, the soft broccoli quickly found it's way into my mouth! mmm!
This however is not very mmm! The gingerbread on top is nice, and it's actually GINGERbread cookies, instead of those that you find in SG that pretty much tastes like biscuits. In SG, its like there is no christmas spirit here! whereas when i was in Finland, everywhere felt so christmas-sy, i think becuase of the snow and stuff :P And they use actualy christmas trees, instead of those shitty ones that the shopping centres have that are made of cardboard. Dont know why people love to take photo in front of those fakes. Would rather have a traditional christmas tree, whether real or not. Either white or green! Since white ones actually do exist. but getting back, this food is both sweet and sour alright! just when you thought that us singaporeans have tasted sweet and sour pork, this is so SOURRRR >.< that i gave up finishing it. The white layer is whipped cream, and the bottom is some berry mix that is AWFULLY SOUR. T^T you know how people say they have a sweet tooth for things, sheeesh all my teeth are sweet teeth and so is my tongue! so coffee and dessert over there....arent really to my liking. :/

After dinner and the wow-ing of the celebration house, we got the keys to our igloo! I knew that most likely, we wouldnt be sleeping when we're at the glass igloo. Turned out to be true! hehehe rather, i slept really v v v little in the night! plus somehow i woke up extremely early and wandered off to breakfast on my own LOL.
 Igloo number two... OH YES the igloos are all in a straight line, so its pretty much like a grid. Eh hey! grid reminds me of some movie. "but you musn't enter the grid!!! *stretches out hand*" just kiddinggggg Well luckily, our igloo is the second nearest igloo. wohoo! (y)
 Ahhh....you see that's brother. and the entrance is really small!! bad thing is that inside is tiled, so when your snowy shoes enter the igloo, you're quite susceptible to falling down. So ya gotta watch it!
 Told you how squeezy the toilet is! and the light at the side creates your silhouette. you're supposed to bathe here too O.o

 CUTE RIGHT MY EARMUFFS hehehe since i'm born in the year of the monkey.... tadaaaa!

 That's how much the clouds covered, quite a lot huh? that's why the chances of northen lights was really low, but we still camped out! we = the young ones!!
That is actually a 36x zoom from this:

WELLLLLLL instead of just simply waiting out in the igloo, bro and i thought like well, might as well go play cards!! at this point in time, i already had my tripod all set up and ready for the northen lights!! :P :P well instead of playing mono deal or poker cards, we ended up playing with snow!! HAHA like wow how can we possibly not play with snow man -_-"'

 THE AWESOME AWESOME PEEPS!!!! on the left, is me, then Sam, then Gerald, then Sarah!! Actually the white part of the rabbit hat looks like the mouth! :3 i have a video of this!! later when ya scroll down yeah? :) like all the way down.
 Who's idea was it to bury the lamppost? i have no idea, but we soon got to work and it took us a long time alright!! as well as a lot of "EH WE'RE ALMOST THERE GUYS" it was always almost almost! >.<
So....we took a long long time! hehe see if you can spot people walking around in the "mist" shutter speed of 15 seconds :P I NEED ONE THAT CAN GO 30sec T^T hehe but dont you think the effect looks kinda cool?? :D and mum is there taking photos :P i think she's the only adult walking around, the rest seem to be huddled away into their igloos....whats the point of staying inside that igloo?! the transparent top is cool, bu its just for experience. Cool people play in the snowwwww! wahooooooo!!!

From my mum's camera:
 so its like build build build, RESTTTTTT
This is more like the actual lighting, because it is really really very dark there! absolutely no lights around other than these puny lampposts which are good enough. :) wished that the skies could clear though!! but rumour has it that the previous 2 nights, they already saw the northen lights at this area, so its pretty rare to be able to spot it again. (3 days in a row)
 aaaaaand while everyone is tucked inside their igloo, we are madly piling snow onto the mountain! and sometimes onto each other too! as we continued to pile and pile, not just did the mountain get higher and higher, it also became wider! and the igloos, one by one, the lights went out. :)

 POSE before continuing to build again! this time round, more people joined in! like my bro! total was 5 of us!! at first it was just me, Gerald, Sarah.
 Art work in progress okay!!

 After a ton of GUYS WE'RE ALMOST THERE. This time, we can say we're done!!
 The successful builders look at their marvelous creation as they wait under the dark skies hoping for a tinch of green Northen Light to appear. Satisfied, they leave their mark. (esh like some Guan Yu, Liu Bei, The three kingdoms, san guo yan yi like that, at thepeach garden trollolol)
Well two weeks passed from then, and Sarah's friend went to the ice igloo too!! hehe and she took these photos of our ice mountain!! OOOOOOO ice mountain is the bottled mineral water :3 hehe great minds think alike.

Look at that!! even though the cute mushroom snowball is no longer on top, it looks really cute now eh!! hehe i think it lost its ridges because of the heavy snowing over there. Like so, on our second day in Ivalo~! well that would be another post :3 this post is getting WAYYYY too long!!!

At the end of the night, even though the young ones didnt get to see the northen lights or have the chance of waking others up because of it, we all had great fun aye! :D :D
This night is probably the most interesting night for meeeeee! haha and the rest too! This definitely beats card games man.... HEHE like pffft card games? who needs them when you have snow!! Especially when Sarah's friends posted the photo of our mountain still being there, i was like HO HO (not like santa) its so cool that it's still there!! What was the temperature like at that time? -20 was it? i only remember the next morning being around there too. and here, there isnt really a day or night thing because there's no sun. err... to me its just all night lmao. Who in the world plays with snow in such conditions?!?!?! US!!!!
Before ending things off, here is a video of us playing with the snow! Credits to sarah! :))
LOL the video is abit weird....FULL SCREEN IT I GUESS. dont know why after uploading it, it becomes like that O.o retarded fail.

And if i dont have a blog post up just before christmas, go watch this really touching video :') I really love the thoughtfulness that they had, with all the teams and effort!! and it's bloopers. :)


As usual, i leave you with photos :))