Family Trip To Levi

We arrived home last night from our week-long vacation at the Levi ski resort in Lapland. We stayed in a cabin near the hill, along with thousands (literally) of other tourists during southern Finland's winter break from school. The trip was fantastic and I went downhill skiing almost everyday and also got a bit of cross-country in as well.

Here are some pictures from my camera. There will probably be more later from my friend's camera as well.

I have countless beautiful landscape shots from the hill, but here are two of my favourites.

Levi is actually a world-class downhill skiing location, and there are world-level competitions held there every year. I skiied down the official "World Cup run", which has a gondola lift of course. The run is renowned for being difficult but I mastered it before the week was up!

There are many lifts at Levi, and it's possible to ski for hours without going up the same lift twice. I hardly ever skiied down the same run twice in one day, and I went skiing for 6 hours at a time! For a map of the runs at Levi, check out this link.

http://www.panoraama.com/levi/

This is a shot of the Levi center at night from the main run.

There were two other exchange students in Levi for the week as well: Juan from Mexico and Kathleen from America. We all shared a cool 'Mexican night' with Juan and his family in their cabin and I spent a lot of time on the slopes with Kathleen, who was snowboarding.

Here I am with Kathleen outside one of the cafes on the hill.

This is me posing on the hill. At Levi I met a girl named Heini as well, who is from my school in Lahti. The guy in the photo is her brother but I'm afraid I can't remember his name!

Below is a shot from the back porch of our cabin. Here you can see all the other cabins packed in around the hill. They are organized into neighbourhoods and there are ski buses running to the lifts for free.

A regular task in my current host family is walking our 2 dogs. I took them for a walk in Levi and got a cute picture of them. On the left is Buddy and on the right is Elvis. It looks like Buddy isn't much bigger than Elvis, but he is A LOT bigger. It looks like something caught their attention!

This trip to Lapland was a very memorable one. While the skiing was amazing, I also got the chance to meet my host grandparents, who all live near Levi in Lapland. My host mother, Sonja, brought us to her parents place. Her mother made me some mittens and socks and served us a moose that her husband had killed earlier. We also spent time at their cabin... which they built themselves! My host dad, Olli, has parents who grow/harvest most of their food themselves! (This is true Lappish living!) I also performed Finlandia multiple times for all the grandparents and some family friends.

Now I'm preparing for school tomorrow while students in northern Finland enjoy their winter break off school. I can't believe it is already March, only another month until my 18th birthday! Then I will be a legal adult in Finland... not sure what I will do to celebrate yet though!

Keep watching this blog for some more Levi photos as well as footage from the vanhat tanssit! I will post that as soon as I acquire the dvd.