Finland gets A LITTLE snow...finally

For the last week or so, it has been fairly warm for winter time in Finland (one day was 40 degrees) and there has been no snow on the ground. Today, was the first time it has snowed since I have been here! It is supposed to snow for the rest of the week and we will be getting a lot.
It has been a busy past few days, although I do think that everything seems busier because the days seem shorter when it is dark at 4:00pm. However, the days are starting to get noticably longer :)
Last Thursday night, we attended our first Stammtisch, which is a party for the exchange students that are held every other Thursday. Each Stammtisch is themed around the different countries the exchange students are from so the group of kids from each country get to plan their own Stammtisch during the semester.
On Friday, we went out to do karaoke (if I can post the video, I will) and played scrabble again but this time with our friends from Austria. The rest of the weekend was relaxing, we went to the coffee shop and worked on homework.
Today, my professor informed me that I spell my last name wrong and there are supposed to be two dots over the 'a', then told me that she would be writting my name correctly with the dots. She also told me the correct pronunciation, which is totally different than how we say it. However, she is the first person to ever correctly spell my last name without any difficulty, she also told me that I have the easiest last name in the class..this is also a first.
I have been assigned a Finnish friendship family that I will be spending time with while I am here. The wife is a member of a Finnish-American society in Jyvaskyla; on Thursday, I will be going to an activity at a planetarium for the society with her.
Finally, next month, I will be spending a week in Ivalo in Lapland. The trip is planned through my school and we will be going to Santa's Village, the Kemi snow castle, to a reindeer farm and for a ride on a reindeer sleigh, cross-country skiing, ice fishing, igloo building, snow shoeing, to a Saami museum, to Norway to go swimming in the Arctic Ocean and on either a husky safari or a snow mobile safari. We also have to catch and cook our own fish and we will be staying in cabins.