I'm here in Turku doing research (but technically a student at Turku Uni) and have been here from August and will be here til May. It's highly unlikely you'll learn Finnish in 6 months and everyone here speaks English anyway, although I'm sure the locals would appreciate it. There are a ton of exchange students over here and exchange student parties are by far the best I've been to.

Speaking of which, GET YOURSELF AN ESN CARD! That thing cost me €5 and has now saved me around €60 already. It lets you get into Prima for free on fridays, and Prima is AMAZING on fridays! Stuffed with people and with the best electronic/dubstep that I've come across here. Other clubs are Klubi (three storey with decent music and dancefloor on the top floor), Dinamo (pretty hit and miss for me, slightly cheaper drinks than others, but the music varies massively), The Monkey (quite expensive, but there are quite a few student parties held there) and Marilyn (I think it's called, been a few times to student parties there, nothing special). They're all I can think of off the top of my head but of course try them all out for yourself, which I'm sure you'll get the opportunity if you go to all the student parties (go to all the student parties). Koulu is also a great, old style pub near Kauppatori (market square, centre of town) full of in-house brewed beers and ales, but it is , like everything else here, expensive.

Koulu is a great, old style pub near Kauppatori but expensive,

Drink prices you can't get away from. They're expensive. The cheapest I've found is €4.50 for 0.5l of beer, which when you've come from the UK where they have Weatherspoons' everywhere is quite hard to get used to. It's a bit cheaper to pre drink before you go out, crates of beer are around 24 for €20, and vodka is around €30 a litre, to name a few examples.

If you like football, there's a great sports bar called Pikku Torre which has ~6 screens which show different games on saturdays, has team scarves from all over the world and has a great atmosphere when the big teams are playing, plus does a decent plate of chips, so I'd definitely recommend. Edisons is another that shows games and is usually less busy. Only one screen though.

They're the things I'd have wanted to know before I came here, but if you have any other questions about what it's like here from a student's perspective, I'd be happy to answer them!