This day is one of the sadder days during my holiday, because this is the day when we actually have to part from the main group, heading onward to Sweden instead, while the rest head back to Singapore. the thought of me being pretty lonely at night felt pretty saddening! you know when you actually recount the fun times you used to have, and when i took those out of the equation as i looked on toward Sweden, i wasn't keen on heading on! The only reason that kept me going, was the fact that mum's trip to the ice hotel, which is in her bucket list, was ahead. Wow and i am listening to a documentary on radioactive wolves while blogging xD

aaaaaaaand once again, i got kicked out of a server on Battlefield 3 after being accused as a hacker. So. Annoying. and battlefield 4 sucks because of all those crappy netcodes that they have! seriously they should just ditch BF4 and give Three a much needed, much appreciated upgrade.

In the morning, i was off to east coast park for a nice jog! though im still having flu... its gotten slightly better, so i was like heck let's go run! let's = myself #foreveralone photos taken using my xperia z! cuz it's lovely :D
still desperately trying to condition myself back into running, especially after the december holidays, my knee injury and the upcoming chinese new year! oh those ba kwassssss *drool* hmmmm so i musnt grow any fatter!! gotta exercise....although my right knee is still crappy but oh well~!
 

Sheeesh days off are so good mannnn xD i get to really relax and let life pass by :P sometimes life seems to be moving just too fast and we need a time to catch up! I still have a ton of nerf gun stuffs to modify and troubleshoot X.X let alone piano practices....

Let's get this started shall we?



okay maybe i should stop posting food eh! :P hmmm it's always about salmon and mashed potatoes! hmmm the red things you see on my plate are actually prawns! they really didnt look like it.... initially, i thought it's some sort of weird foodie but just took it :P Until i put it in my mouth, and realised its actually prawns!
 The weather for that day was -20degrees! as you can tell, its snowing pretty heavily! this is one of the heavier snowing we had so far! well this day was actually a really simple day, whereby we had time to walk around the various shopping malls nearby to buy some souvenirs and what not, and by noon, we would be on our wway to the Santa Claus village before flying back. and for my family, its onward to Sweden!

Hmmm though the buildings here are pretty big, there are VERY VERY few people here actually! like frankly speaking, the malls are pretty dead with very few people inside. Hmmm... is it comparable to any mall in Singapore....nope....unless youre talking about Siglap mall then perhaps...Siglap mall is an extremely ulu (secluded) mall in SG! you can walk though a stretch of shops and sometimes you would bump into people. Whereas if you'r esay at....vivocity? You have to nudge your way around, especially so on weekends. Absolute hell. Dont know about ya but i hate MASSIVE crowds! small crowds are alright, because they liven up the place yeah! (y) #pickyfella

 Thankfully, they have all these sorts of roadside stalls! frankly speaking this was the only one open at that time. PHEW managed to buy some reindeer products from these shops, makes me feel like trying to make a handy gift for myself using a reindeer horn! :D idea idea. well there isnt really much for you to buy here, unless you want to buy trucks? anyone? like seriously these were on sale on the pedestrian walkways.
take a look at the buildings in Finland, and how different the buildings look! Really, their buildings have more colour xD

 YEAHHHHHH told ya its pretty empty eh! hmmm as you can tell, the mall is pretty new, like i dont know how they do it, they keep renovating these malls although very few people go there? as in like in Singapore, you have malls still having those traditional metal grills at the sidessssss.

 Here, you have my dad being a Seppala model wanna-be.





COME ON, admit it, it looks so cute!!

















Hmmm come to think of it, its chinese new year real soon and my house is in a mess :x sighhh so much to clean up seriously. But oh well! my table is once again messy just a week after clearing. At least my life isn't in a mess! or is it?

oh lol! it writes here as -10, but the other temperatures show it as -20 weirdddddd. how cold is it outside? when a cold wind blows, you better hope you're wearing a ear muff! when visiting a cold country like this, you just gotta take photo of the thermometer so you can actually remember the temperature there! Stay too long outside and youll begin to feel really cold alright!


We spent quite a long time at the Santa Claus village, frankly speaking there's quite a lot to see here and enjoy, so... if there's anyone planning a trip here, do take your time and explore this place kay! hehe if you ask me, its like a mini wonderland? with shops and cafes and sorts, oh and santa too, so its good to cater a long time for this, like half a day! (well at least we stayed here till the skies became dark, i believe that should be around...12pm i think. Good thing is that it's very close to the airport! well you gotta take a plane from here, to Helsinki Int Airport before you can fly back to SG>>>>>

You know at first, i thought that blogging about this day is gonna be pretty short, since its just on santa claus village, but you'll be surprised how much stuff we did at santa village! it's just like you needa spend that amount of time there lah :)



Dont forget to keep a lookout for the signage that shows where home is!
how cool if you could have such a signage that is covered in snow in Singapore!!


This line above represent the artic cicle.... is it? hmmm i think so! hahaha by the time we were in rovainiemi ( seriously its hell getting the name right)  yeah correct! oops ah yes this is the line for the artic circle! Actually the weather here is a lot mroe manageable than what we faced when we were 250km into the artic circle.

After that, we headed in to the gift shop where we could get a chop that we've been to the artic circle and Santa Claus village on our passport! seriously i miss my could passport xD it had those cool scouts jamboree chops when i was in primary school D: it would be so cool to collect such chops~!
oops hehe i was distracted by a pretty girl~ woots~




let's take a look what's inside Santa's house shall we! (you dont have a choice)

Upon entering, going past the "santa is in" sign, we came across this wall filled with mini doors!! guess what that is! :)) well actually, its a calendar! pretty cool huh!! hehehe so that means, it was 10Dec when we were there. Its quite like those boxes with doors, whereby every time it was a day closer to christmas, we would be able to open up one door! Dont know how many of ya actually fiddled with those stuff!



Inside the Santa Claus house, it's modelled after a clock tower, having a really really dark interior with lotsa moving parts! I thought i took a video of the gears and all moving inside... i have no idea where the video went. But anyway, it's two storeys high inside, seemingly big as compared to the exterior aye?



Ya know, it feels weird blogging about christmas which is supposedly coming, when in reality its already way past it xD DAWWWWW and we are already on to Chinese new year :(((( sobs hehe i feel kinda sad when time passes by. Like as though that can be helped. I mean like when you look back at the days and wonderful times that you used to have for the past christmases. Thats why the song, Last Christmas is so sad!!!!!!! T^T
 HEHEHEHE im sitting next to the pretty girl that i was distracted by previously xD oopsie~ too bad she doesnt talk much though we tried opening up to her. more peeps, more fun! (yes she's in the same tour group as me and yes the tour is ending supposedly) you know, there's always some peeps whom you converse more than others because you click better. That's all!




We also had the chance to send out postcards to friends across the world, of course you gotta pay for postage, but frankly speaking how much does postage cost?! i think each stamp was about a dollar? like come on you can spare a dollar or two right?? just eat less chicken rice.

dont know why my camera wont focus on the stamps but oh well!


 Look at how much snow there is!! and as usual, my sub conscious winking of my eye when taking photographs all hail ming yang the winker. wow sounds kinda wrong (wanker) xD hahahahah  ahhhhhhh okok PG13.. :l HUGE snowman alrightttt
Of course, since it's the last day before we part ways, i got to take some photos of the awesome people ive met right!!! *eating croissant while blogging one handed* this is harddddd OKOK hahaha surprisingly, we turned out to be really good friends after the holiday! :D :D hehe that's why group tours are more fun because you get to mix around, and who knows! you might someone who clicks really well with ya and become awesome buddies!!

hehe after that, we went to play on the slides that they had! well they only had two xD one big, one small.
Ahhhh blur shot, bro took this photo.... -_-"' he seriously needs some lesson on photography alrighttttt. well at least i have a video of me sliding down the small slope! :P the big slope was a failure HAHA first vid is the small slope, second is the big one. hope no one saw my fail then! a big THANK YOU to SARAH for sending me the vid!!!
YUPPPPP we soon went over to the Post office, where we got to post our postcards! yes we havent posted them yet xD come to think of it, after they out the postboxes in another house, it helps to split up the crowd too! so at least its not too crowded at one spot :) luckily, we were in time to post the cards so that they would reach by 2013 christmas! i couldnt decide whether to write this or last christmas -.-

Trust me, when you post a postcard liek these, its not so simple. one does not simply post a letter and walk off. Lemme show you how long i took. just when it seems like the postcards are going in...
  I thought i had more but oh well!! hehehe super retarded and i always got to make way for others who wanna post first xD

here, you can see the various "elves" working hard to sort out the letters that we posted to Santa! pretty cute huh! Hehe i remember some of them have really nice costumes :3 cant imagine going to work in that, you boarding the train like that xD or you driving on the expressway hehehe

 So here you have people also writing more postcards for their relatives back home! bumped into japanese, singaporean and US tourists!
hehehe so this is how it looks like when its raining huh!! :P

And it's pretty soon then did we board the bus, on the way to the airport.... my family followed, before the bus driver or bus captain as they would like to say it, dropped us off back at the hotel. well that was after we grabbed a cuppa chocolate from the santa claus village cafe~! hey wait a minute i didnt take photo of the cafe?? Sheeeesh and the cafe was so well done!! Darn. All i remember is the numerous matchstick boxes that they sold. Apparently its a common thing in finland. matchsticks. all sizes! (wanted to say all shapes and sizes but all of em are same shapes) oh except for the different boxes they are in, really really nicely done up boxes i must say.

And soon, we had to bid farewell! NUUUUUU from here on, the tour is gonna be just my family! so.... not so much of chatting with others anymoreeee...SOBS//////hehe quite a lot of blur shots xD

AHHHH back in hotel room....sheeeesh had to pack our bags as we were gonna leave for Sweden on the following day.

You know somehow, after being to Finland and Sweden, along with watching frozen, the movie, it feels like i've gotten the whole package xD like its only when you go to such places and experience the northern lights, reindeers and winter can you really relate to frozen a lot better! :) thankful indeed!

That's all folks!!! thank you so much for reading my blog post ^^ really appreciate it!
i know its quite mad to scroll through such a long post and all, but i feel better to do a really comprehensive one. as usual, i leave you with some random photos. not that many since we only went to one place.
next episode,crossing the border and ice hotel!