A JOURNEY IN

FINLAND
AGAPIE DAVID MARIAN
Cls. VI-E
 Chapter 1

It was the of August 1957, I was 18 years old and I could finally do what I wished so much, to
make my dream come true, travelling to Finland. Why Finland? Well, Lapland is in Finland and Santa
Claus is in Lapland. Basically, I was “hunting” Santa.
Why do I want to hunt him? Since I was a child, I was “obsessed” with a question: “Why Santa
doesn’t offer the same presents to all the children?” “Why is he making differences?”. Every morning, on
the Christmas’ eve, some children from my neighborhood were getting only fruits, biscuits, while I was
getting other stuff like clothes, bikes, toys and many others. That’s why I was sharing my presents with my
friends. I really didn’t understand why Santa wasn’t bringing to all the children nearly the same presents, I
don’t think that there are bad or good children so that they get different presents. Every child should be
happy on Christmas! The Christmas period must be a happy one to every human!
That’s why today is the big day! Today I’ll tell my parents about my dream, about my wish. In the
evening, while we were having supper I had courage…
“Hey, dad, I want to tell you something, but first listen me to the end. I want to go to Finland!”
 “Why? What will you do there? It is very cold and you don’t know anybody there. Now, that you
are 18, I thought you will come with me to the company to help!”
“Yes, I know, but you know that this is my dream! I want to find Santa!”
“I don’t know… How much time will you stay there?”
“I’ll try to stay maximum 6 months, please, understand me, this is my dream!”
“Ok, if this is what you wish, we’ll support you!”
Out of joy, I hugged my parents, feeling like I was flying.
The second day we were setting up the trip’s details. When I went to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep, I was so
happy, I was going to meet Santa Claus!
 CHAPTER 2

The next day, I went to the train

station with my parents. I couldn’t believe that I was
going to visit my dream destination. Hardly, I left my
parents and went to buy my train ticket to Finland and
some snacks for the trip and... here we go! In the train, I
met a very nice man, called Mister Johnson, he was
travelling to Finland because he wanted to know more
about eskimos. We talked about my family, about his
family, he had two children, Joan and Mark. I really liked
Mr. Johnson and I wanted to have a trip partner like him.
 When we got there, we were looking for a family of eskimos that we hoped to offer us a house. In
Finland, everything was white, the sun was hiding behind the grey clouds, the snow was covering all the free surface, the
distance between the houses was huge, probably 100 metres or even more. The houses looked like a really big snowman
being all covered in fluffy snow. Finally, we discovered an eskimos family that agreed to give us food, water and a place to
sleep. The eskimos were really nice and I liked their traditions, the food was really good, too! My favourite one was the seal
meat. I was kind of happy because my dream was closer and closer to become true. My partner, Mr. Johnson was studying
the eskimos while I was making a plan for how I’ll get to Santa’s house. Though, I was sad because I was so far away from
my family.
Chapter 3
It was the third day with the eskimos.
“What are your traditions here, what do you do here?”
“Well, little David, this is how they called me, our tribe is a very old one, we were some of the best warriors, but now
there are only 10-15 families left from the tribe. Despite the fact that we live in negative temperatures almost all the
time, we live for almost 100 years!”
“Why are you only 15 families, what happened to the other ones?”
“They were killed by the sea men.”
“What is your food like, I only ate a sandwich made with reindeer meat and some seal meat.”
“We eat seal meat or polar bear meat, they are really good, we have the same recipes for 500 years!”
“Wow, amazing…you have a really hard life here, Mr. Yamakoshi.”
“Yes, it’s true, what other questions do you have?”
“Do you know where I can find Santa Claus, this is the “purpose” of my trip.”
“I saw Santa Claus once when I was 16. He was really fat, tall and he seemed nice.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“I met him on the scariest mountain, named The Tall One. It is the tallest mountain in the world. We
discovered it 200 years ago. My grandpa discovered it!”
“But I thought that Mount Everest is the tallest.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“And, what is the way to that mountain?”
“Come, I’ll explain it to you!”
And, like this, I was really close to meet Santa Claus.