MONT BLANC TRIP

With Max from Embry- Riddle

Traveling Around Eruope!!!

At the end of October we had one week of vacation from school and I was able to travel around some countries of the European Union. I went to Portugal, Spain, Belgium and Holland. The experience was absolutely amazing. We learned about culture, history, met a lot of people and had a lot of fun. Traveling around Europe is very easy, you can either travel by train or by plane. There are very cheap airlines and you can find tickets for about 9 euro from one country to another. The most common airlines are called Easyjet and Ryanair, they only thing is that you can not check any luggage because it will cost you around 40 Euros, so you will have to travel with one hand bag. Some pictures from the trip are posted in the blog for you to enjoy!!!!

MADRID-SPAIN

AVILA-SPAIN

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LISBOA-PORTUGAL

PORTO-PORTUGAL

Things to Know!

-Tram: In Grenoble it is very common to use the tram so it is good to buy a monthly pass that costs 25 euros per month and you can access any tram or bus at any time without having to pay each time you are going to use it. One way usually costs 1,50 Euros, so it is worth it to buy the monthly pass. If you don't have the monthly card or the ticket of the day you can get charged a 50-60 euros fee for not having it.
-Cell Phone Plans: There are four main cell phone stores: Orange, Virgin, Bouygues and SFR. Most of these companies have similar plans and their plans are very different from the states, especially when we are use to have unlimited text, phone calls and internet access on our phones. In France, most of the plans are usually 2 hours of talking, unlimited text, and 500 mega bits for internet use per month and you pay around 30 Euros. If you have your own phone you can get a plan without a contract, but personally, I brought my Iphone and it didn't worked even having it unlocked so I had to buy a phone here and they are usually 1 euro to 10 euro but with a contract of 12 months or 24 months, which you can terminate if you have a letter from back home saying that you have to go back to your country to study or work.
-CAF: The CAF is a French help from the government for students. There is a whole process behind the CAF and you have to provide some documentation but it is worth it to do it because they reimburse you money that you have paid in your residence and after that you will continue to pay less, which is very helpful. 
-OFII: For the OFII, if you are staying more that 3 months in the country you have to complete your visa status as soon as you arrive to France. First, you have to send a letter that is given to you in the French consulate in the United States. After that you will receive a letter saying that the papers were received and that you need to send an email for two medical appointments. One appointment is for a pulmonary, respiratory test that takes about 5 minutes to do and the other one is for a general check where they will give you the results of your pulmonary scan. Finally, with all the papers you receive in your last medical visit you have to buy a stamp that costs you 50 euro and with all those papers in the OFII office they will complete your visa status. 
-Meals: If you buy a card from your school that costs 15 euro you can recharge the card each time and all meals at school will cost 3 euro, which is very convenient because you get a full meal with a salad or fruit, bread, a drink and a dessert. 
-12-25 Card: If you are planning to travel it is recommended to buy the 12-25 card. This card is for students that are under 25 years old and costs 50 Euros, but after that you get 50% off every train ticket you buy inside France.

Residence OUEST

The Tram Station near Residence Ouest

The view of my residence

Having dinner in the kitchen 

I am going to talk a little bit about my residence. I am currently living in residence OUEST that is a residence on campus. It is very close to the university, you can either walk and it will take about 10-15min depending on where your class is or you can take the tram and it will take you 3 min to be in the university.  The tram stop is 3 minutes away from the residence walking, so it is very accessible. The rooms are small but you have what you need. You have your own closet which is big enough for you to put your cloths, you have a table to study with a chair, a big shelve to put things and the best part is that you have your own restroom inside the room. The bed is very small though; it is smaller than a single bed so until you get use to it the first days is weird to sleep on it. The kitchen is shared by floor and it does not have any microwave, fridge, or oven. It only has the stove and the sink to wash your dishes, but it is usually very clean and it’s nice to share the kitchen because you get to meet people from different parts of the world. Also, this residence is one of the few residences that has its own laundry which is very good because otherwise you will have to go to the campus laundry or any other laundries in the center of the city. Usually its about 2 euro for the washing machine and 2 euro for the dryer.The bad part of the residence is that Internet connection is very bad. First of all, it is very weird to get access to the internet and then when you have access to it the connection is very slow, specially from 5:00-11:00pm because everyone is trying to get online, so forget about using Skype and trying to call your family because it does not work. The residence is convenient if you are going to study on campus but if your classes are in the center of the city it is somewhat far. The only way you can go to the center of the city is by tram and it takes 20-30 minutes to arrive to the center depending on the location.

The School System- UJF

Getting things from other students

Teleferic

With classmates and professors

Being in Grenoble has been an incredible and unique experience and a great opportunity. I have learned that people live different from the way we live in the United States and that each culture is very different. For example, the system of the university is very different from the system of our school (UCF). One of the things I have found very different and somewhat complicated was the way they do the schedule for students. At the University Joseph Fourier the schedule of your classes change every week which is very weird because you can't plan anything ahead. Every weekend you have to go online and check your schedule of the week and sometimes the schedule even changes one day before class. Also, some professors change the time of the class without telling the students so I have arrived to class early in the morning to figure out that the class was changed or the room number of the class is not what was assigned on the schedule, which I think was very disorganized specially for international students. As an example, one day I had my final speech class presentation and on the schedule it was supposed to be from 8:00am-11:50am. I arrived at class early to be prepared for my presentation and the teacher told me that the presentation had been changed to 10am in the morning. So, yes! professors change their classes the way they want, schedule is never fixed.

Another thing that I have found totally different is how your semester is organized. For instance, I have 5 classes but not all your classes start at the same time nor they finish at the same time. Usually you have some classes for 2 months and lectures are 3-4 hours per day. You even have some lectures in the morning for 3 hours and then in the afternoon the same class and same lecture for another 3 hours. Also, some of my classes have labs and usually you have your labs for 1 month but each lab session is for about 4-5 hours and every day a week.

Another strange thing I found while studying at University Joseph Fourier is that computers don't work. They are very, very, very slow and usually their Microsoft Office don't work and they have the version from 1997. So, I usually took my own computer to school because it was frustrating trying to use the computers from the school.

One of the advantages of the school system is that the school prepares integration events for the international students. For instance, during the first two weeks of classes we went up to the bastille with all the students of our program, our advisors and professors. This was a great opportunity to get to know everyone as well as learning about a historic place that Grenoble offers. We also had another day of a gathering together where all students and professors shared food and ate together. Another activity that the school organized was a day of getting things that others students had left when they were gone. For instance; plates, cooking utensils, skiing boots, pants, hangers, etc. This was very good for new students because we didn't had to buy new things.

2 SEPTEMBRE, 2011

After an hour and half train from Lyon Saint-Exupery station to Grenoble gare, Jean and me finally arrived to Grenoble, France. At first, we were a little bit lost since it was our first time in the city and were not able to communicate because of the language barrier. In Grenoble, very few people speak english and if they do speak english they prefer that you try to speak in french otherwise they won't try to help you. After arriving and trying to figure out how to get to our residence we decided to take a taxi from the gare to our residence, which is called "OUEST Residence". The taxi was about 12 euro.

When arriving at the residence our first experience was to wait in line. After waiting for about 30 minutes we were finally helped, however no one knew english, so it was a bit difficult and frustrating at the beginning. But, we finally received the key for our dorm. The residence is pretty good, even though the rooms are small, you have your own bathroom inside the room and a fridge if you want to have it      ( you will have to pay an additional fee for the fridge, but it is worth it ). The kitchen is shared by floor, it is very organized and cleaned since every morning there is someone that cleans the whole kitchen. However, the residence has the worst internet connection ever. I was without internet for about 2 weeks and a half because it is very difficult to install the software that is required and you have to wait until you are registered at your school in order to get a password. For me it was also a challenge because I have a MAC and in order to have internet connection in your MAC you have to go to the EVE building which is in the school and they have to do a configuration on your computer ( no body tells you this, so after 2 weeks I was able to find out how to make it work). 

The first day was a long day in Grenoble and why not say it, a little frustrating and overwhelming, but I also have to say that it is worth it. We arrived at school and our advisor was traveling so we were very lost and disoriented. We had no idea when our classes were supposed to start, our schedule, were to get our ID's, etc. Somehow we arrive at the international office and we were lucky because a lady helped us and gave us information on the procedures we had to make until our advisor got back from his trip. The first step was to open a bank account. Opening a bank account took us about 3 hours, so you have to be prepared to have time. I have found out that here in France everything takes time and people are very patient, which is very different from what we are used to in the United States. Also, opening a bank account the first day is crucial since without your credit card and account number you can not do anything here in France.