Onnellista Uutta Vuotta (Happy New Year)

This is going to be a report of my Christmas holydays in Finland. My initial intention was to continue in Raahe to work in my project but then I met another basque in Oulu that was going to do the same thing and we decided to spend some days together. One week before the Holydays a finnish friend of mine invited me for Christmas Eve with his family and I agreed, I was very lucky.

So first of all I spent that day in Kuivaniemi cause that family lives there. My friend's parents doesn't speak enlglish so it was hard to communicate with them but with the rest there was no problem (a sister, a brother and brother's wife); with 2 years old Valkeri we could use signs, actually I learnt a lot of finnish word with him, we played a lot; Pitu knew speaking spanish but I preferred to talk in english cause i don't feel confortable with that language, I think that for finnish people is the same with the sweedish language. They were all very nice, I could also have sauna in there and althought I was a bit afraid with finnish food the dinner was delicious; after visiting the town and playing to trivial for a long time I went to bed. Oh, but before that Santa Claus visited us, he brought lot of presents, specially for Valkeri, but there was also one for me! Next day they took me to ... how to say, ok, to skate in the snow down-hill. After having another big meal we went to see the coast, a place where there is good weather you can distinguis the border of Sweeden. After giving thanks I took the train back to Oulu where lives another friend of mine, but a basque one.
My intention was to stay just for two or three days in there but I finaly leve Oulu with the new year. A chinese couple of my class in the university gave me about 1o books to return in Oulu, but it was at Oulu University so I had to cross all the city to get there, it took me about 40 minutes in bike, but it gave me the oportunity to know how is the city. The next days we usd to wake up late (at 12:00 more or less) so there was no much chance to see the sun-light, we were like vampires. Sometimes we went to ice-sakting, close to the place where Karpats team plays hockey; we met a guy there that teached me how to use the stick, the problem was that before that I should know how to skate :-), well I know a bit but not enough, i¡I'm thin in muying some boots to skate in Raahe, let's see if I improve. For new year eve we made a big dinner, I think Leire won't cook for some days and then we celebrate the new year twice, on in the finnish time and another in the basque time, so we had to drink salmiaki twice :-). Then we went out for a while, and it was the same as always, drunk people everywhere, some of then falling down to the floor, finnish people have a serious problem with the alcohol. The following day we went to the beach, it was completly cover with the snow! and the sea was frozen! we took some great pictures in there, when the sun was going down. After that I came back to take the bus back to Raahe.