I flew half way around the world for this, so i thought it was a good idea to post a blog about it...ok so I'm back in utah..well not for long, I leave in the morning back to St. Pete. But it's been a fun week here in utah. Carolyn and Gabe tied the knot and are now in jackson hole...which is a slight relief because although I'm happy that they love each other so much, I couldn't watch their PDA for another minute. So the wedding turned out beautiful and taught me a few things...like how to be a better dancer. Windsheild wipers, Knees. 
Even though I love America more then anything, I have been having Baby russian withdrawals and i'm excited to get back and finish out the semester. This is a short blog but I don't have much time left in utah and I need to make the most of my day. And I need to practice my dance
"The Hardest Part is Yet To Come"
LONG VACATION
So,after months of looking forward to getting out of russia for 3 seconds, our long vacation came!
We left at midnight on the 3rd and made our way to the bus station. Kristin and I had taken some intense cough syrup that my mom sent me so we didn't really know what was going on but that was one blissful
night. The tour we were on was actually a russian tour so we couldn 't understand anything that our tour guide, Vladimeer, said. He did however speak a bit of english which is a blessing because we would have been lost day one. After a night on the bus, we arrived in Helsinki. We visited the big white cathedral, a monument built for a famous finnish composer, and a church made out of boulders..imagine that. Then we had some free time and we just walked around and shopped. That night we met our group back at the bus and drove to Turku. Turku is a city about 3 hours west of Helsinki and it was such a fun drive. It was snowing like crazy and the finnish landscapes are freaking amazing. So we got to Turku, took a little look around and got on our cruise ship bound for Stockholm. 
After a good nights sleep we arrived in Stockholm early. Stockholm has some wonderfully wonderful arcitecture my friend. The First day consisted of us being sucked into souvenir shops...and thats about it. We probably spent 5 hours just looking at souvenirs. The Second day we went on a little tour of the city on a boat and there was some CRAZY french men that 
kept distracting me. I also strayed from the group a bit and went to the National Museum and got a little lesson on swedish history and got to participate in my favorite thing ever which is Art pondering. The rest of the night consisted of meeting our tour bus and getting on yet another cruise ship bound back to Helsinki.
I don't know why but I always seem to find something in Helsinki that keeps me entertained and thrills to the point where I am obsessed with Helsinki. Some of the people in our group might not agree but that's just because they didn't go "moose huntin'" with Randi and I. We decided that stickin' around the city was getting old so we went to our old friend bus station and jumped on some random bus (Bus 106) and ended up in the "wilderness". It had
been snowing really hard all day so everything was covered with whiteness and it was so fun. Randi kept falling on the ice though so that a party. We then got back on the bus and went to the shore of some lake. I'm never let down by things in Finland and i wasn't let down there either. So, our tour bus left us in Helsinki and they proceeded back to St. Pete (with one lady that was very happy that she had 2 seets to herself). That night we got on a very shaky boat headed to Tallinn, Estonia. It took about 3 hours to get there and until we discovered that you could go on top, the ride was very sickening.
When we got into Tallinn we checked into our hotel and went to bed. 
We stayed in Tallinn 3 full days and it was really neat. Tallinn is an extremely old city in a very old country that has a lot of really cool history. While we were there we attended the Estonian History Museum and learned all about the awesomeness of this freaking accient city. Randi and I took a trip to the ZOO. It was a party mostly because of the seals and the chimps that flew into the window. We also did a lot of simple sight seeing by foot. They have a palace and parks and sea shores that kept us busy for a lot of the time
and I appriciated having some quiet time in such a beautiful place.
