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Student’s Name: Emma O’ Donoghue
UL Course: Applied Languages
Academic Year: 2016 / 2017
Semester: Autumn
Host University: Aix Marseille Université
Host University Code: F MARSEIL 84 - AixMarseille Université
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Student experience
My choice for Erasmus was to attend Aix Marseille Université in Aix-enProvence in the south of France. I was in the « fac de lettres » department
the (Arts faculty). Before my departure, I received an email notifying me of
a French language course being offered to incoming Erasmus students
before the academic term was scheduled to begin. This is a full week
intensive French course, where classes are given to students of different
different levels, for example: B1, B2’s etc. I didn’t attend this course as I
was on holidays abroad during this time and the timetable unfortunately
didn’t suit.
Also the above intensive course was taking place three weeks before my
lectures started, this was leaving a break of two weeks in between where
the university would not be open. While I felt it would have been nice to
attend this course, the feedback from students who attended it, wasn’t
very positive.
I also received another e-mail from the host university saying that
orientation was taking place from the 8th to the 15th September and that
classes would start on the 19th September, ’16. I arrived on the 8th of
September in Aix-en-Provence travelling from Dublin airport directly to
Marseille. This airport is very near Aix (less than 30 minutes in a bus). When
I arrived in Aix I met with other students from UL, who had been there
already as they had attended the intensive French course I mentioned
above.
Before I left for Erasmus, I had applied for accommodation with CROUS
online. Crous are a French organisation that looks after on site campus
accommodation for incoming students. There are two names to the
accommodation on site which is Cuques and Gazelles. I originally applied
on line for accommodation (student residence) called Cuques. However, on
arrival I was placed in a residence called Cité Universitaire l’Estelan.
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This residence was located in the town with a 20-minute walk to the
university. It is the only off campus accommodation under CROUS. My
bedroom was on the ground floor and had steel bars attached to the
window. The room was very small in size and completely bare on arrival. It
turned out I was the only UL student allocated this accommodation. The
following morning, I was informed by a local taxi driver that the area in
question wasn’t the safest and to be mindful not to return on my own in
the evening or night. This particular residence at the time was under
construction. There had been a storm a few days previously which meant
there were no lights outside the entrance. I felt quite uneasy about this as it
was extremely dark in the evening and I had to use my mobile phone light
to see where I was going. I informed the manager about this issue and he
didn’t seem to be concerned at all. I made a request to change
accommodation within a few days and with the help of the Erasmus
department in UL, I moved to Cité Universitaire les Gazelles on site
accommodation. This residence is the closest to the college, only 5 minutes
walking distance to my university department. It is a 20-minute walk from
les Gazelles into the town center.
One of the conditions of staying in student accommodation was to get
insurance, the cost of same was 50e for the year. I felt safer here and my
room was on the second floor overlooking the mountains. There are seven
pavilions in les Gazelles, I was put into Pavilion six which seemed to be
mostly occupied by Erasmus students. There is an onsite pizza restaurant
on the grounds of les Gazelles which comes in handy when you are hungry,
if you haven’t time to cook. On each floor in the pavilion there is a
communal kitchen. This kitchen is quite small considering there are
approximately 60 students on each floor. It comprises of one electric hob
and a microwave. Many students including myself invested in a saucepan, a
kettle, a frying pan, cutlery, bowls and a mug/cup and saucer. There is no
linen supplied so one has to bring their own pillow, duvet, sheets and
cleaning equipment. I bought these in Monoprix (similar to a Tesco/Dunnes
Stores here locally). These items however are more expensive to buy in Aix
than here in Ireland.
I attended the orientation which involved going to the international office
in the college and signing some forms. All students were given an
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information pack which included several hand-outs containing information
about opening a bank account, student cards, job offers, paying rent and
student life in general. I bought a French sim card during my first week in
Aix. I travelled to Marseille to get this as there is a phone shop there called
“Free” who have the cheapest offers. I met with my tutor and she discussed
some of the classes available to Erasmus students. It was quite difficult
trying to register for some of these classes as it was based on a first come
first served basis. Once I realized this, I arrived in plenty of time for the
following classes to ensure that I got a place in class. We had one week to
go to as many classes/lectures before making our final decision concerning
which subjects we wanted to pursue. There were a lot of Irish people on
Erasmus in Aix, therefore, it was quite difficult to integrate with the French
people at times. I found them to be quite reserved in general. There is a
buddy system available for Erasmus students, I didn’t avail of this but I
would recommend it as it’s one way to integrate with French students.
Institutional practices, support
As I explained above the orientation involved signing forms in the
international office where we were given information leaflets about the
university, the academic calendar and possible student jobs. Unlike UL,
where new students are given guided tours, this was not the case in Aix. A
lot of construction work was underway on refurbishing the university. At
the beginning it took about 2 weeks to find my way around the campus in
locating my lectures and tutorials. For some language classes we had to
register online. We had to research and choose what classes we wanted to
do ourselves online using the Aix Marseille website. This process was
tedious and was left up to students to register on their own without any
help or guidance from the host university. We had to come up with our ow
timetable comprising of 24 credits. We had to register separately for
exams.
Before going to Aix, I had chosen my modules and I was able to change
some of these during the first week of college without any problems. The
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class sizes were much bigger in general and on occasions lecturers would
use microphones.
Cultural differences
I noticed quite a few cultural differences during my stay in Aix. The French
speak much faster and with a stronger southern accent which at times I
found difficult to understand. I found that not many of the natives spoke
English and they preferred when you made an effort to speak French to
them.
It took a while to adjust to all lectures being taught through French but in
hindsight, this was a good thing as I really improved in my listening and
comprehension skills. I would like to have improved my oral French skills a
bit more but it was difficult to make friends with patient French students. I
also chose to do a Spanish module as I’m studying Spanish in UL. I can
honestly say I really improved in both French and Spanish during class.
The transport facilities in Aix were great. Buses ran frequently all day apart
from Sundays. In the bus station I got a “Cartreize”, which is a discount card
when travelling on certain buses. However public transport closes down at
10pm each evening. Taxis were always available but were very expensive. I
downloaded the Uber app and found that this service was more efficient
and cheaper. The train station was located just 15 minutes outside Aix. A
shuttle bus ran every 20 minutes from the college residence into town. It’s
important to note after purchasing a bus ticket, it needs to be validated by
scanning into in a machine on board the bus. The reason for this is that
inspectors regularly do spot checks and can impose fines if found on board
without a validated ticket.
There are many things to do in Aix, it’s a beautiful town full of culture.
Cezanne the artist was born and raised there. There are many museums
and a variety of shops to see. There are lots of facilities including two
cinemas, gyms and many restaurants. There is amazing architecture with it
being famous for its wide range of fountains.
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The town in general is very expensive but the accommodation provided by
CROUS for students is reasonable, approximately 65e a week. The bakeries
sell really nice “pain au chocolat”, I would recommend going to a bakery
called Paul in the city centre as this was my favorite.
Hints & Tips
For future students travelling to Aix-en-Provence, I would recommend that
they improve their level of French before going as it was quite a culture
shock upon arriving.
Always lock your room door (even if going from room to the kitchen) if
staying in student accommodation, as there were some burglaries in my
pavilion causing distress to some students.
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