Winter is Coming

My time here in Kuopio and at the University of Eastern Finland will be coming to an end soon. I don’t know exactly where the last month has gone.

These past few days have seen fewer hours of sunlight and temperatures that remain below freezing. Snow has been intermittent and the local lakes are starting to freeze. Indeed, you can see visible signs of ice’s progress each day as these photos taken two days apart reveal.

School children have switched over to sledding for their recess breaks. These occur for 15 minutes every hour. I have no idea how the teachers manage to bundle and unbundle that many children in a short amount of time.

Local stores like Prisma appear to be more crowded as people start to get a jump on holiday shopping. And they “celebrate” Black Friday too which is surprising to me.

Both Kuopio (top) and Helsinki (bottom) have begun putting out formal decorations for the Christmas holiday.