It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Fireworks!

Of course they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here (that would be silly) so the actual day of Thanksgiving wasn't that eventful aside from it being my LAST DAY OF CLASSES and skyping my family. I was really missing grandma's mashed potatoes that day!

The day after was pretty fantastic though for two reasons: 1) I didn't have to work/deal with Black Friday!!! 2) It was the Christmas Opening event here in Oulu!

They turned on the lights in the city center

They had a lot of
performances on
the main stage

Christmas decorations in every shop window

This time Santa came to me!
and I got to finally take my pic with him :)

Fireworks over the water :)

Beautiful Christmas trees

The next day (Saturday (yesterday)):
Us Americans got together and had Thanksgiving dinner. It was so great! So much food!

Food!

Shown: 7 Americans, 3 Belgians, 2 Australians,
1 French, & 1 Dane (1 Mexican came later)
It was so great explaining and celebrating this
wonderful holiday with other people!

After dinner, my Kummi family picked me up and we went ice skating! :D

Love these girls!

The rink is outside and it's free!

I haven't skated since last year so I was a little wobbly. Alina and Eerika had to hold my hand to help me stay balanced! haha!

Then we went to Micky D's for some ice cream!

After they dropped me off, I went to a friends house for a Christmas party. 

I love the holidays


Tomorrow I am leaving on my Sami Culture class trip! We will spend the entire time up north in the lapland and will be gone until late Friday night. Can you believe I still haven't packed yet?? HAHA! I better go do that now!