Haggis, Bagpipes, and My Social Network

On Thursday 25th January Scotland celebrates one of its national heroes, Robert Burns, the poet. The celebration is like any festival in Finland – take midsummer for example. People gather together to celebrate, but nobody's exactly sure what they're celebrating. So like any given festival, Burns Night is a just another excuse for throwing a party :)
The International Society was a bit early this year and decided to throw the party a day before the actual festival, so we had our festivities already on Wednesday. And ten points to them, once again. They had organised everything from bagpipe players and Scottish country dancers to buffet snacks (haggis, aye!) and of course, their trusted accordion players, the same band we had at the ceilidh two and half weeks ago (dunno the band's name). And ALL FOR FREE. We didn't have to invest a single penny in this. Antakaamme siis iso käsi ISocille!
So first there was a Scottish march band, that is bagpipe players and drummers, and Scottish country dancers in their kilts, performing sword dances. After that the floor was ours for jumping and sweating, again, like that other Saturday. This time we didn't have to starve, as they had a free buffet for all of us to enjoy – I tried haggis, not that bad at all, unless you remind yourself of the infamous ingredients... Some pics of the performers below.





There was also an international pub quiz, and guess which was the first question? "Which country won this year's Eurovision Song Contest?" :D The Finns went bananas, naturally. Oh yeah, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but this place is PACKED with Finns! I'm aware of at least 10 Finnish exchange students, and I know there are even more as degree students. It's mysterious. We're invading the country. Beware, all ye lads and lassies!

After the ceilidh we continued the night on Ashton Lane, the bar concentration of West End, just a stone’s throw from the Uni. Again, I have to moan about the selection of bars in Helsinki. There are so few options! Here a whole range of tastes is represented in just one 100m lane. Of this wide array of clubs we chose The Loft, which turned out to be quite a stylish place to hang out, or to chill out, more exactly, 'cos they had comfy sofas all over the place :) Well, the real reason why we went there was actually the fact that we couldn't get in anywhere else, 'cos Sam was wearing shorts :D Sam-WISE as he is, he had thought they would be more practical in dancing, which they surely were, but not in getting in to clubs past the hawk-eyes of the doormen.

I don't know if you understand what I mean by 'we'. I could do the same as Petra did in her blog and introduce some of the people in this story to give you some idea what kind of maniacs and junkies I'm hanging out with. No, they're all nice people, really ;)
So first of all there's Petra, a medical student from Tampere, NÄÄS, whom I first met online at Irc-galleria, where else! :P Petra lives far far away at Firhill Court student apartments and has already slaughtered a poor innocent rat during laboratory tests. She has a blog as well, and that's in Finnish, so if you're bored of this English shit, just bookmark Petra's funny site and read that instead ;)
Then there's Anna-Riitta, a German major and English minor from Helsinki, studying at the same department here in Glasgow and doing more or less the same courses as I do. She lives 5mins away from my place in a fabulous basement flat with state-of-the-art facilities – wireless internet, TV, DVD player, well, you name it – BUT there's one drawback. To get coverage on her cell phone she has to put a pillow on the arm of the sofa right next to a window, and then carefully place the phone on the pillow. Otherwise – no coverage! :D
To continue with Finns, there's Maija from Helsinki, who I actually knew by face 'cos it turned out that she's also from SOKLA. So back home she studies at the primary teacher education like me. We've even been to same courses. Neither of us knew that we'd both be coming here. What a coincidence :)
Then the other nationalities.
Eva is a Norwegian girl majoring in music. She lives quite close to my place, which is why we quite often walk home together after a night out. She brought two guitars here with her, which makes her quite popular among the other guitar lovers. One of them is Sam, also known as Samwise, a hobbit-like figure from New Zealand. He studies philosophy and genetics, and according to his own words, with such a strange combination he might have to pursue a career at McDonald's. He shares the Party Flat with Harry, a music student from Australia, and Robyn, his German-Australian girlfriend. And last but not least there's Gayathri, a fun-loving Australian girl whose name caused confusion at first. Then there's a various group of girls and boys from the US and Canada (Amber, Sarah, Sara, Antoine, Dillon...), who I (or we) hang out with every so often.

There's one snag about the fact that my social network consists mainly of Aussies and Americans: I have started to pick up this terrible, hopeless, hybrid accent, a mixture between British, Australian and American pronunciation. Not a good example to my future students, huh? ;)