

Campagne de Sampigny, France
- Finding an appartment : The university should offer you student lodging at The CROUS residencies for a low rate. However if you feel like looking by yourself, there are much better solutions available for the same price. The CROUS offers you a small room with a bathroom ( no toilet seat in ours) and a shared kitchen ( no microwave, no oven, a small fridge in each room, no freezer). This kitchen is shared with the whole floor and is often dirty because the others don’t bother cleaning after themselves ; in some residencies, it also has opening hours which mean you can’t cook late at night. So if you are willing to do some digging, try to avoid those.

Cathédrale de Reims, France
- Insurance : The university should affiliate you to the LMDE (the student insurance) for the length of your stay. Don’t believe that because you have paid, you are all set : you will need to provide the LMDE with a whole lot of documents before you can actually get the card (and be reimbursed in case of problem). Without that card, you are still insured but have to pay for everything and will be reimbursed later by the insurance (hope you are not in a hurry 😉

Rambouillet, France

Port de st Malo, France
- Opening a bank account: in the paragraph before, we talked about this paper you need from your bank to be reimbursed. It has to be from a french bank because the insurance doesn’t transfer money to international bank accounts . For that too, you will need a birth certificate 😉

Grenoble, France
J’imagine que ce n’est pas facile avec tous les papiers nécessaires…
En effet, ça demande pas mal d’investissement en temps:p et de la famille et des amis dans son pays d’origine pour renvoyer les documents qu’on a oublié/pas pensé à prendre 🙂