Californiaaaa

In Cali for Christmas :)
Will write more when I arrive back in Sweden.

Artic Circle

The adventure started with an 18-hour train ride to the North to Abisko, Sweden.

Me and Sara at the beginning of our adventure:


This was Sara's favorite progression of photos...
Me making fun of the tourists (and therefore ourselves)...


And then all of a sudden me sleeping (just a couple minutes later)...


I am ridiculously good at sleeping...I don't want to brag though.
We had a carriage that had beds for us which was really nice. Although I was too excited to get much sleep on the way there.


Almost there....(see the snow on the trees?)


When we finally got there it was already dark--you know since we got there in the middle of Scandinavian night at 2:30 pm.


Here's a picture of our Hostel

Lots of skies!


Here's a picture of our hostel during the day time:

I love this place so much!

Once we settled in we decided to go and play in the snow...and take lots of random pictures (yay for you!)

This is the driveway to the hostel...my soles on my boots were so flat that I could just slide down the thing. It was a lot of fun, but caused a few bruises over the trip...


We thought it would be funny to take an angry-face picture and send it to our families saying "This is how much fun we're having." I never did...but I'm sure it's still hilarous.

"WE LOVE ABISKO!!"

I had a sudden urge to do kart-wheels.


I had a lot of trouble landing them though...(UGGS)


We took lots of sexy pictures because we knew we looked good in our snow gear


Oooh I know...Irresistible...


At night (real night time...like 8pm) we went and did the whole Sauna deal. They had a strict rule that nobody could be wearing any clothes. So Me, Sara, a german girl, an icelandic girl, and four frech boys all awkwardly sat naked in a Sauna for an hour. When it got too hot we ran outside and rolled around in the snow. It was awkwardly fantastic. Me and Sara like to say that our friendship grew in a way we never really wanted it to. Lucky for us it was rather dark in there. We just kept telling ourselves it was 'an experience we should have.' Ain't nothing like feeling extremely uncomfortable! And on top of being naked infront of four good-looking French guys, they are all about saving hot water up North so we had to shower in the Sauna. They just had a bucket of heated water that we used to pour over ourselves...so yes..naked...sauana...bucket shower in front of everyone. But it was a good experience, I really did enjoy the sauana. They are all over Sweden too...even on the top of the buildings in Flogsta--but we are allowed to wear swimming suits in those. This is a picture of the Sauna during the day time. We didn't bring our cameras in...for obvious reasons.


After the Sauna we decided to go on a little night walk and hopefully see the Northern Lights. Even though it was cloudy we found a good spot where we could seem em. It was just outside of a little restaurant...I just laid on the tables and watched em...


It was AWESOME. I am sooo happy I got to see the Northern Lights...My camera couldn't get any pictures, but it was just these streams of green light in the sky. It looked like they were moving like waves. It was so amazing. Sara was able to get a picture of it sort of when we saw them the next night...but it was definitely better the first night.


See em? It was just a little one there.

We left after an hour or so because my hair was frozen

You can't tell...but it's frozen.

The next morning was...DOG SLEDDING! Absolutely positively the most amazing part of the trip. Anyone that knows me knows that Huskies are my favorite dog. So this was just ... a dream come true.

Walk up to the puppies


So gorgeous.
The sleds before the dogs:


Once we all got there we were given some harnesses that we were supposed to put on the dogs, then put the dogs on their sleighs. I don't know why it looks like it was so difficult here...it really wasn't.


Some of the dogs were ridiculous. They were so excited to go they were just barking and howling and trying to get out of their lil dog houses. This one had his head completely out of the cage


Puppies all ready to go:

Sorry I know I have a lot of pictures of the pups but I just love them so much

See those dogs on the right of the picture?


Those are my dogs just sittin there. They are very lazy. Well compared to Sara's who just had a ton of energy and all ready to go. Mine just trotted along...it was hard to get them to go.
Oh em gee sooo cute

These were the lead puppies...our tour guide took these pups out. They seemed to be the more experienced. The one sitting right under the moon was missing an eye.


This puppy knows whats up.


Some more pics with some awesome pups:


Right behind Sara...So beautiful with the moon and snow and bright sky.


I was too scared to snap many pictures while I was moving, but here's one:


Absolutely gorgeous right?
The sledding was amazing. The sky was constantly pink and orange (sunrise/sunset...never actually saw the sun). My puppies were actually kind of slow. They were nice and fast at first, but then one of them got tired or overheated or something...I felt so bad because everytime we would stop she would just look back at me with her puppy eyes and be all like 'please don't start again.' She just sat down and trotted along. My dogs got all tangled up in the ropes a couple times because my one dog kept trying to walk while the others were running. So I had to put all my weight on the break and the guy behind me came up and held my puppies back while I untanggled them. It was quite a lot of work. So even though my pups were a little slower, I love them more than anything. I fell off a couple times, but since I had them Uggs on I would just slide on my shoes until i could get my feet back on. Sara's dogs were so excited that they just took off at the very start and she flew right off the sled. I was really disappointed I didn't catch a picture of it.

At the end we were able to hang out with a pups for a little bit. Theses are Sara's crazy pups.


My pups:


This one was so good. I wanted to adopt (steal) it...


LOVE LOVE LOVE


Making fun of my lazy dog. Poor thing was so tired she couldn't even stand up anymore. (On the left).


Then we got in the back of this little cart thing on the back of a snowmobile that followed the next group on the dogs back to the camp. It was very cold because we weren't moving like we were on the dog sleds.

Next to me is a Canadian girl that was also there from Uppsala (but I didn't know her before)


This is one of my fav pics from the trip, it's exactly what the snowmobile ride back was like...


Sooo goood.

We were really exhausted after that, so we just took a nap, did the Sauna again, and watched the Northern Lights for a bit again.

In the morning we cross-country skiing. Here are some shots.


I sucked, but it was fun...Me fallin


I absolutely loved it, but poor Sara HATED it. It was kind of funny, how miserable she was.
Here she is pretending like she was having fun


A few more pretty pictures:


After skiiing we took the train back home...we were sad to leave:


Back on the train for another loooong ride home...


This was by far the best trip I've ever been on. I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed my trip!



Here's a compilation of just a few of our falls (accomplished all in just two days)!

Keep in mind, we were really only to catch a few on camera


Caught at the moment: