They really do love the sauna here!

I'm finally feeling more like a human here; I got my luggage yesterday so I actually got moved in.  I also realized how huge my room is.  Let me say that this is the first time in my entire life that I've had my own room, and it's really odd. The first couple nights I kept waking up and expecting someone to come in, because there's no possible way that I traveled 4500 miles to finally have my own room!  But it's true, and it's big and empty because somehow I just couldn't find space in my suitcase for my NKOTBSB poster or my plethora of camp nametags that were all over my room last year.  speaking of my room, it locks automatically and so initially I didn't close it all the way so I thought it didn't lock at all.  Then Erin got locked in her room and I figured out that the more you pull on the door the more it is definitely locked.  But we're both becoming pros at not getting locked in, and it's all good.


Anyways, last night I went to the sauna for the first time! I'm kicking myself for not bringing my camera, because it is more beautiful here than you can even imagine!  The sauna was about a half hour walk from my apartment, and it's on a little lake (or a pond, as one of the Finnish guys said- it looked like a lake to me).  We walked up to it and the first thing I noticed was the giant ski jumps that went right out over the water.  And then I heard a whooshing sound and a guy on skis comes racing down the slide and right into the water! I guess they were practicing; I almost snuck up there to try it.  So we go into the sauna and find out that one of the rooms is broken, so guys and girls are sauna-ing (if that's the proper word) together.  Awesome.  We change and go into the sauna area, and there's a long line and people keep entering and exiting the sauna.  Therefore the sauna itself was "cold" because of the door always being open.  And by "cold" we mean only 60 degrees Celsius, which is about 150 Fahrenheit. So no big deal, right?  But it got better! After sitting in the sauna for about 15 minutes we went down to the lake and jumped in! Well, some of us did (Erin may have chickened out... someone's never done a polar bear swim at Deep Freeze!) and it was cold!  It really could have been much worse, but I think I came up saying some very American and very un-ladylike words.


So that was fantastic, and tomorrow I continue orientation and hopefully get registered for classes!  Oh, and a couple people said they wanted more pictures, and I don't have a whole lot but here's one of the bridge across the lake on the way to the Psych building. Pretty, eh?