School alone

 Hej,

  Friday was national holiday celebrating the independence of Finland from Russia. It's a very special day for the Finns because it still some old speople that lived before that time. Also after the independence were very hard times to Finland because of the several wars that they had with Russia. Actually it still exists some bad idea of Russia by the Finnish people.
  So exists some traditions in this day like go to the graveyard to put some candles in memory of thier family or the dead soldiers. They also put two candles in the window, have a special dinner with the family and watch TV where shows some important dance made by the President of Republic and the guests are important people, some veterans, ambassadors in Finland and former Presidents of Republic of Finland. After shows some important Finnish things like Lordi (finnish heavy metal band who won the Eurovision Song Contest) or the game between Sweden and Finland of ice hockey in 2011. All the years also appears a movie called "The Unknown Soldier" or "Tuntematon solitas" in Finnish wich shows the Continuation War from the finnish perspective.
  I really like this think of celebrating the national holidays, because in Portugal, a national holiday means a day to do nothing.

This photos as you can see are from the graveyard. Sorry for the quality. This last one is in honor os the Karelian people who was forced to move from their place because of the Russian occupation.

  Saturday I made my very first snowman. It was so funny. Before going home I went to Harju Tower to see the city with the snow and it's very beautiful.

  At night I went with another exchange students to Laajavuori to the downhill.

  Yesterday the Spanish guy left back to his home. But in January he will come back. It was very hard to find an host-family to him but thanks to the "power" of the social networks he found it!

  And finnaly I have a proof that the days are incredibly small. 

I took this photo in front of my school at around 14:15.

  Hej in the begging is in Swedish. It's mandatory to learn this language since the 7th grade here in Finland because of the Swedish-speaking population . About 5/6 % of the population, mainly concentrate in the coastal areas, have the Swedish as their mother tongue due to the history (Finland belonged to the Swedish Empire during several centuries).