Christmas parade

The Haflinger horses pulling Santa

The choir preceded by frosty and some winter princess looking lady

Helsinki City float

Little kids on Shetland ponies with bears

Old historical fire truck

Old Fire car

Some of the choir members with their children

The Basset hounds

An old delivery truck

Children walking with bells on their hands

Two mounted Police officers, I don't know the breeds of horses but they were pretty tall.

Today we went down town to watch the lighting of the streets and the Christmas parade. The lighting of the streets was pretty cool. I will post a picture of it later, the one I got today did not turn out well enough because it was not dark outside. The Mayor gave a speech that we did not understand, but everyone else seemed to enjoy. A choir sang a couple of songs in Finnish and "Jingle Bell Rock" in English! After the choir finished and the street was cleared the parade started. The parade was very very small. Washington's (our hometown in NC) parade is about 6-7 times the length of this parade. All of the parade participants are in the pictures above (sorry that they are so blurry). The most interesting thing about the parade were the Basset hounds. Everyone laughed when they saw them. Once they passed us one of the dogs let out a loud bay and everyone busted out laughing. Once the parade was over everyone just followed the last group out and left.

Since I have so little to tell you about the parade I will write about yesterday. Yesterday Randall finally decided to get his hair cut. So, we went to this place he read great reviews about online. The guy that cut his hair was from Tunisia, which is in the northern tip of Africa close to Italy. He spoke English well and said he knew Finnish ok. He did a good job with Randall's hair and was nice. After Randall's hair cut we decided to go to the local meat market. The market is in a two story building with meat, cheese, and baked goods on the first floor and fabrics, crafts and artwork on the second floor. the market was small but different. The prices were higher than the Prisma so we will most likely only buy baked goods and sweets from there if we get anything. After we left the market we came home and spent the rest of the afternoon working on homework. Overall, this weekend was pretty uneventful much like the rest of the week.