Arriving in France

Alright, so my first semester abroad started in France at Université de Provence (which has since fused with two other universities in the region) in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France. It's a very beautiful place with great weather. I was there from the end of August until the end of January and I think the coldest temperature may have been 15 degrees celsius. Which for someone who comes from such a changing climate as the one we have in Canada, I was used to 30+ temperatures in summer and often -20 or -30 degrees in the winter. So I was quite happy with the constant sun and mild temperatures in Provence.

But let's be honest, the French have a bad reputation for being rude and snobish and not necessarily the most open and welcoming community around. Before arriving to the Marignane airport on August 29th 2011 I made sure that there would be someone there from the university to meet me and show me where my dorm was and all. I had sent many emails and received confirmations that I would be greeted at the airport on that date. Unfortunately, my flight got in a little later than scheduled and the greeter apparently decided to not stick around long enough. So once I had gone through customs and retrieved my luggage (which was very large and heavy, and which I will talk about more late). So there was no one there, I looked around for a while, waited, walked around the terminal, found no one. Luckily for me there was another girl there waiting for the same person so we ended up helping each other get to Aix-en-Provence and to our respective dorms.

Bottom line, I depended way too much on the French university and their student association to help me out on that first day. I should have prepared myself for the worst and brought a map or information about transportation to my dorm.

If you are going on an exchange, prepare yourself extensively (I will have further examples of this late on as well). The more prepared you are, the happier you will be and the easier the transition into your new far away life will be ! :)

cheers !

where to get started

Let me start by introducing myself and explain a little about why I am doing this. My name is Adèle and I am a canadian student studying modern languages at Bishop's University. I am doing my undergraduate degree, or bachelors, and since I am from Quebec my degree is only taking me 3 years.

A great thing about many universities are the exchange programs available for the students. You can go pretty much anywhere nowadays and study for a semester or a year. The question is where to go and how the heck is this exchange possible. Well it's actually a lot easier and affordable than most people may think. And of course, any kind of exchange experience looks really good on a resume!

So if you are at all interested in going on a student exchange with your university, I suggest you start with asking your school about where you can go and how to get that entire process started. Once you have everything set up and you are ready to leave for a semester, or two, abroad, that's when I can come in and help out with little things that some may not necessarily think about before leaving home.