Hard working hardly working man

Now that I've spent the first week on my new job and I think it's good time to share my experiences about life here so far.

First of all I just have to praise the scenery in here! Sun is out only for few hours every day so basically we only got sunrise and sunset, both of them painting the horizon in beautiful colors. From the window of the house I can see nothing but trees and few hills covered in snow.

Reindeers enjoying the few glimpses of sun we get

First contact with reindeers was interesting, they really proved to be fascinating creatures. Each and every one of them seemed to have unique personality. I got to feed them and learned how to strap the sledge on them them and then I got to steer the sledge over the frozen river that goes between Finland and Sweden.

The reindeer really got into a nice trot after a while and even the owners dog Nasse couldn't keep up with it when it was on full speed. The steering was surprisingly easy as the reindeer mostly new the route and followed old sledge path.

I also got to play around little with a snowmobile and a ATV. Both witch I found to be really awesome toys for a grown up man.

The tours

View inside the Kota hut where
I keep my tour speech in

Tours usually follow the same formula, first I welcome the group to the farm, trow few bits of information about it and introduce our staff.

Then we usually split the group in half if there is over 12 people and half of them go for a half an hour reindeer sledge ride with the other guide while I tell the other group about the reindeers on our Kota tent while we grill reindeer sausages.

Then we do the same again with the other halves of groups and at the end of the tour visitors get to steer the reindeer all by them self.

The first tour went actually pretty well considering that everything I knew about the reindeers or Sami people was studied in one day. The first group even tipped me and they really seemed to enjoy their tour!

On the second tour one of the visitors even said "It really shows that you have grown up in here with these animals, you really are professional and enthusiastic about your work", to witch I had no chance but to smile and nod while trying not to smirk like a fool and laugh. It was a good illusion to give.

The training

Few days later it was more quiet day, only one tour group so we got some spare time to train the new reindeers that have been brought from the woods just few days earlier and haven't been used to the presence of humans before.

When approached these new ones went into panic and started circling around the poles they we're attached to like crazy. We just had to bravely go in dodging the rope and the reindeers antlers when releasing them from the posts before we took them out for walks.

This guy really was a handful of
work to walk

It became clear why we train them young pretty quickly, these animals can really put up a fight when they feel threatened. They punch with their hind legs and push with their antlers.

I found all 5 that we took for walks to have very different personality. The first one i took for one was too afraid to move and didn't take a single step himself. He just stood there and if i loosened the rope at all he took a huge leap to the deeper snow and tried to wrestle himself free. When I got close he just totally froze from fear and didn't move at all when i patted him.

My new favorite Reindeer

Then there was a complete opposite of that, one with a white fur gave a good beating if you wasn't careful but once you got to moving with him he walked very nicely behind and didn't resist too much.

I instantly started liking this one, it had some attitude and wild spirit in him.

Free time

After work there wasn't much to do around here. Distances are too great and there are very few people actually living around here. Sometimes the evenings can be little boring and I can see why some people fall to drinking quite often around here. My phones internet even refuses to work with my computer and on the phone itself working veeeeeery slowly, i mean loading a single picture for a minute.

Well luckily my flatmate has a portable modem that I get to borrow sometimes and I just ordered my own too witch will arrive sometime next week.

Good thing about this is that I have more time to get things actually done, I just found a good workout that I can do without gym equipment (Convict Conditioning).

On the first weekend the British seasonal guides held a party at the place they are staying witch was pretty nice. Got to meet few locals too since there isn't much else going on around the place, There isn't even a single bar in this town that Finnish are allowed anymore because of past mishaps they have had :)