For me, Monday was the day of listening to a lot is Finnish without understanding that much. At my current level I understand maybe 2% of what people say and that is obviously far too little to be able to follow. It basically means that I understand some words here and there.
The first event was the opening speech for the student union’s jubilee. The student union is the umbrella organization of the guilds (something like Fachschaften in Germany). Student life in Tampere is very active, I will write about this later. TUT turns 50 this year and so does the student union so there are lots of events to celebrate this.
As mentioned the speech was mostly I Finnish with only short explanations in English. Those who were early enough (including me) got a free glass of sparkling wine (yaay :D).
In the evening there was a drinking game competition which took place in Teekkarisauna. This event combines three of the things that Finns enjoy the most: drinking, singing and sauna. For most other people this would be unimaginable but sometimes they do these at the same time!
The competition consisted of two leagues: one for existing songs from a students‘ song book called Rasputin and another one for self-written songs. The winner of the latter competition will be included in the next edition of Rasputin. Most of the songs and most of the organization were in Finnish which didn’t keep us international students from participating. We first performed a very short Finnish drinking song to the tune of Eurovision, later we did another longer song. Of our group only one knew this song so we asked one of the Finnish guys to join us. In the end Erasmus Fuksit ja Suomalainen Mies (Erasmus freshmen and the Finnish guy) got at least an honorable mentioning at the awarding ceremony!