This title isn't as Agatha Christie as I'd have liked, but I thought it'd be better to keep it simple and I also couldn't think of anything ambiguously witty. So, to clear things up, the birthday was mine. I turned 21 on 10th February and for the occasion Shaun came to visit me, which was really cute of him.
Friday 9th was the longest day of my life. I think all I did was sit on my bed waiting for Shaun to tell me he was at Heathrow, then Helsinki, then Rovaniemi. I was full of anticipation. I hadn't seen Shaun for just over a month and I was excited to see him and show him around. As well as this I would be reunited with my trusty mac with a new 'I can hold charge now' battery.
My actual birthday was pretty wonderful. Katie and Lucy (and Shaun, kind of) decorated our flat and put banners and confetti around, they even got me a cake which I was very very happy with. I absolutely LOVE cake, so on my 21st birthday I had cake for breakfast, what a time to be alive. The fact I'm even writing that I turned 21 is very strange. It really doesn't seem that long ago I was at laserforce celebrating my 10th birthday with my brother and my pals. And of course it's very cool to think I turned 21 in Lapland. I spent the rest of the day showing Shaun around, basically I took him on a walk and pointed out things I liked, like the Angry Birds park which I have yet to go to, it's on my Lapland bucket list. A big event of the day was also walking on the Kemijoki river, which is completely frozen apart from a small section by the candlestick bridge on the way to town. So along with celebrating my birthday in Lapland, I got to walk on a frozen river for my 21st too, very very cool.
It was very surreal to take Shaun to all these places that could now be classed as my 'old haunts'. He was here as a tourist which is obviously so different to my experience of being here. Whilst I've been in Lapland one of my mottos has been 'I still have time', this mindset is perhaps one I should get out of, February is almost over and it doesn't seem like three weeks ago I was lamenting the length of January. March is next week and I go to Russia in 30 days which in the grand scheme of things isn't very long at all. Weird.
Shaun was only here for a week so he definitely didn't think of it the way that I did, which was refreshing really. On Tuesday we went to Santa's village, a place I've only been twice, so Shaun could cross the Arctic Circle. He was a bit disappointed that the snow on the actual line hasn't been cleared so he had to make do with the arctic circle pillars instead. Basically no boomerang for him, sucker. Then I showed him round the plethora of gift shops which he was both impressed and surprised with. He had to keep reminding me he was on holiday, which was the strangest notion because I've got so used to going about my daily life in Lapland, I've never really thought of it as a holiday. Going to Norway was a holiday, going to Poland was a holiday, but I don't see Lapland as a holiday.
He'd done some research about what was in Rovaniemi town centre, to find some things he wanted to do and asked me if I could take him to the football stadium (typical football obsessed male) to which my response was yeah if you know where it is. Not that we could do much more than look at it because you know, it was covered in snow. But I did discover a cute little pastry shop on the other side of the town centre past Cafe 21 with pastries at the nice little some of 90 cents (absolute bargain).
I had a good week and it was a good thing to see Rovaniemi from a different perspective. On reflection I'm not sure if I've ever looked at it as a tourist. This is a place I've called home for the last six months and it was refreshing to see it this way or try to. Shaun visiting also made me realise how much I've got used to being in Lapland and saying this is where I live. It seems very normal for me to put on some base layers before leaving my apartment and look out my window and see snow that goes up to my knees. This is my new normal and I forget that it's completely different to what's come before.
