Important Details About Life In Aix-En-Provence Past Review

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

The instruction was really first-class. All my inquiries were given full attention and thoroughly explained. The teaching style is much different; 3 hour classes and professors that sometimes ramble. The rambling is partly due to differences in language style. For instance, Count of Monte Cristo in English is about 400 pages shorter than French or Italian versions. The workload was honestly minimal, which ended up meaning that unless you were an ardent student, it was very possible to miss out on a lot that was offered. That being said, it was also very easy to immensely increase your language abilities. We were given lots of unsupervised free time, and so it really was possible to do almost anything you want. Unfortunately, the natural will to stay with fellow American students, for the sake of communicating easily, meant that the language was sometimes reinforced only in class time. I think it was very important to reach outside of your program to interact with locals, in order to have even more time with French.

On-site administration of your program

Firstly, Vivienne Hamill is an incredible woman. To be able to manage all of the crazy students, including myself, during Spring 11' was very impressive. She seemed to be able to answer any question I had, and if she didn't know, she would look it up and give me a detailed answer very soon. My expectations were exceeded beyond belief with her support and willingness to do whatever she could to help us.

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

I simply checked a box online, indicating that I'd like to be placed in a homestay and then filled out a roommate matching form. The house was beautiful, and it was about a 20 minute walk into town and class; nightlife and classrooms were about a five minute walk from each other. I didn't have to buy anything to settle-in and my host family was very warm and inviting. I was very happy with my placement with them.

Food was incredible and the only reason why I didn't rate this portion five stars was because Aix En Provence is a very expensive town. That is, if you're eating out all the time. If you make it to the grocery store, it's much cheaper. Secondly, if you're staying with a host family, your dinners are already paid for. Monoprix is a great Walmart-like department store, in that you can buy groceries, clothes, and other things in the same store (rare for France.)

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

My program had several excursions: the first one was to several nearby (1 hr) small towns with beautiful scenery (l'isle sur la sorgue, Gordes) and a weekend trip to Venice before Carnaval started the following week. In Venice, we watched this woman descend, via cable, from this massive tower over a crowd of hundreds of people to this stage. Afterwards, it was mostly celebratory drinking. If there was Anything, seriously anything, we wanted to do, we just asked our advisor about it and she gave us details about where to go, cheaper options, and helped us figure out how to make it possible. One of my favorite parts was in the first week of our program, where a group of people and I went to a soccer game in nearby Marseille.

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

This town was a bit smaller than my college-town, Athens Ga, but it felt much larger. It was much more compact and people were able to walk everyone. Safety advice: use common sense. No health issues and I didn't ever have to visit a doctor, so I'm unaware about that.

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

I found that mostly the students who tested into levels 4 and 5, the two highest levels, were really the main ones who wanted to practice the language outside of class. Outside of my school though, I practiced everyday with the members of my homestay family, locals, and other francophone students. I didn't really ever ask if anyone spoke English, because it was never my goal to do anything other than learn French. So about that, I know only that whenever I stumbled or seemed uneasy speaking French and locals would start talking in broken English, I always asked them to speak French again because it was more comprehensible and secondly because of my will to improve my language abilities.

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• Host Family
• Apartment

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• Host Family

• Support from Advisors
• Aix-En-Provence
• Host family

• Mandatory time spent with same-age people who speak no English
• more optional excursions