Ling Guo

Fall 2006 - 4B term

Institut de Science Financière et d'Assurances (ISFA), Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

I studied at the ISFA for the Fall 2006 semester. ISFA is actually a (very) small school and research institution attached to Lyon 1, and has the oldest and second biggest actuarial program in France. (If you don't know what "actuarial" means… feel free to skip the section on school at the end of this report.) The exchange was very emotionally rewarding for me, and I honestly don't think I have a single bad memory from my time in France, except possibly for trying to withdraw the balance of my bank account the day before I left, and even that experience was amusing and validating in its own way. I will try to cover some of the practical aspects of the exchange process, in chronological order as the issues arose in my case, and hopefully it will be useful to you.

Paperwork before departure

There are extensive horror stories about French bureaucracy but my worst experience was standing in the Ontario Health Insurance (OHIP) office arguing with the agents over whether a form that has "This form is not Proof of OHIP Coverage" printed on it in letters an inch high would actually be accepted by the French consulate as proof of provincial health coverage. In my case, because I was only leaving the country for five months, my OHIP coverage didn't actually cease and they have no preset form for these situations. I ended up attaching my actual OHIP card to the visa application package, so I don't know if the consulate would have accepted a photocopy. Other than that, there were no problems. Some general observations:

Start on the visa application as soon as you get the admission letter from your host university.
Call your private insurance company early to get the proof of coverage letter from them. It took mine three or four weeks to send it.
The mail-in visa application is very convenient. If you plan to go to the consulate in person to apply for a visa, book your appointment early. Do not wait until August and then panic because all the appointment times are booked until the middle of September.

Travel to France

Try to find someone from the ORA program to travel to France with. It makes things a lot easier and less overwhelming – you can at least watch each other's suitcases. I traveled with two other students who also went to study at Lyon 1.

The sooner you book your tickets, the cheaper they are, but keep in mind that airfare is generally expensive at the very beginning of September. I booked mine through Flight Centre and flew with KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) to Lyon, getting there on September 1. I am not sure if you can move in to residence in August, or whether you would have to pay full rent for the month of August if you do. I have heard that if you move in towards the end of September you will still be charged for the whole month.

We took a taxi from the airport to the residence, rather than navigate the airport shuttle and tram with 50 kg of luggage each. (Also, try not to over-pack, because (1) you will go over the luggage allowance for the airline and end up standing in line to pay exorbitant amounts of money for it, and (2) you can buy most of the things you need when you get to France.) The cab fare was €54, which split between 3 people was quite reasonable.

Note: if you are supposed to move into residence on arrival and your flight is delayed so you can't meet your exchange coordinator before moving in – contact them and let them know. This is what happened to me, and the Lyon 1 coordinator (merci Madame Bouyer!) was able to arrange for me to go straight to the residence and have a place to stay.

Residence

Lyon 1 offered a choice of two residences to the exchange students – a studio at Résidence Albert Einstein, which was €360 before APL and €250 after, or a dorm room at Résidence Puvis de Chavannes, which was €120 before APL and €80 after. The studio was only available for year-long exchanges. Both residences are across the street from the main Lyon 1 campus in Villeurbanne, which is a suburb of Lyon in the northeast of the city. I had initially wanted to find a residence closer to ISFA, which is at the southern end of Lyon, but ended up taking a chambre at Puvis de Chavannes just so I could move in immediately after arriving. The building is pretty old and the kitchen and washrooms are common. I stayed there for the first weekend, but on Monday, while sitting outside the residence management office, I heard the secretary offer a renovated room to another student so I charged in and asked for one too. The rent is about €210 for September before APL, and €120 afterwards.

(The same principle applies in every aspect of the exchange experience: keep your eyes peeled and your ears open.)

The renovated rooms are in Résidence Madeleine Monod, which is also across the street from campus. It turned out to be the best residence ever. The whole building had just been renovated, so the rooms hadn't been lived in and everything was new. There is a small washroom and shower tucked into the room, wall-to-wall windows (granted, the walls aren't that far apart), a huge desk and a mini fridge. The kitchen and eating area is common, so you still get to interact with your neighbours and sample each other's cooking. It was a great place to live.

Preparatory French class

Lyon 1 offered a one-week French class to the exchange students.

Note: If you want to go to this course, try to resist the urge to do well on the online placement test they ask you to write. I don't know what the actual class is like, because... apparently I did well on the test.

Food

Eat in the resto'U. It is tasty. And cheap. There's a lot of choice and the menus even showcase lyonnaise cuisine. The ENS resto'U is especially good. Lunch is usually better than dinner, as the food is freshly cooked at noon. You can buy CROUS meal tickets, but some places also have a swipe card that you can add money to. I bought the meal tickets at the Puvis de Chavannes resto'U on the first Monday after I arrived – you are supposed to show your student card but no one asked for mine. ISFA arranged a swipe card for me at the ENS resto'u, as that is where all the ISFA students eat.

For weekends and midnight snacks, I did most of my shopping at the Sunday marché for fresh vegetables and fruit, and bread, and roast chicken. Other things I bought at supermarkets like Carrefour or Champion, which is cheaper but dingier. There is a Champion very close to campus. Another really good supermarket is Auchan – the stores are generally located in the suburbs but still accessible by public transit.

Savour the cheese. And the wine. And pretty much anything else edible you come across.

Paperwork after arrival

I had no problems with any of the paperwork after I arrived. Just be prepared with the right documents and have a little patience for the line-ups – bring a book, music, or a friend. Try not to get frustrated with things – it's miserable for you and it's not pleasant for the person across the desk to deal with your frustration either.

The coordinators at school were very helpful. My carte de séjour package was handled by the Lyon 1 coordinator, and the residence arranged for someone from CAF to come in the evenings to process APL applications, at the end of September. I was still able to send in my application even though I didn't have the carte de séjour yet – CAF sent me a letter in late October asking for a photocopy.

There is a mandatory medical exam as part of the carte de séjour application, which took place in November. I couldn't make the first appointment time they set for me, and they were very good about changing it when I went to the ANAEM (sort of the French immigration agency) office to speak to them. (Calling them… didn't work so well, but the office was accessible from ISFA so I just went after lunch, before class.) I got my carte de séjour in the middle of November and sent a photocopy to APL.

A civil liability insurance was required, as well as a separate one for residence. I bought mine at SMERRA, and the office is flooded with students buying insurance anyway, so the staff know which insurance you should buy. Mine was about €60 altogether, as I lived in a chambre rather than a studio. I did end up paying the €200 sécurité sociale, when I registered as a student, to the registrar at ISFA.

There is a very charming and appropriate saying in France – restez zen. It's a great mantra for paperwork, or any other frustrating situation you may come across.

Transportation in the city

If you have to take public transit to go to classes, buy the bus pass. Get the TCL identification card, and you can charge it up every month at the self-service machines at metro stations and tram stops. The student bus pass is €30 a month and very worth it. Paying the fare works on the honour system, but there are frequent inspections and people do get hauled off the bus/tram/metro.

The velo'v bike-lending system is fun to use, and you can get a subscription on your TCL card and use it to sign out bikes. The only problem is that when you get to your destination there may to be any slots available to return the bike.

Phone and internet

I brought an unlocked GSM cellphone with me, so I just got a prepaid SIM card from FNAC (which is the French equivalent of Best Buy, only better) and buying minutes at tabacs. It's also pretty easy to sign up for a plan and get a cellphone that way once you arrive in France, but be sure to bring some kind of identification, usually a passport, with you.

Internet was not quite painless. You can use the school facilities once you get a student number and BIP number, but they're not open on the weekends, except for some libraries on Saturdays. The wireless in my residence wasn't installed until October, and there were some outages. I believe the Lyon-St. Etienne CROUS is installing WiFi in all its residences, so 2006-2007 was a trial run and we didn't end up paying a monthly fee, which was supposed to be €6. There are also internet cafés but you may or may not feel comfortable using them.

Banking

Banking is easy. I opened an account with BNP Paribas, as their youth savings account had insanely good interest rates. You can go to a bank branch and make an appoint to speak to someone about opening an account, but I just showed up and waited to see someone. The funny thing about banking in France is that self-service relies heavily on online-banking, which is free, but banking by phone incurs charges on your phone bill.

Travel

The two step guide:

Get the 12-25 card.
Go nuts.

General impressions

I had a really, really positive experience with the French people and culture. If the people I encountered were not always effusive, they were unfailingly kind and courteous (except maybe for the residence cleaning lady who yelled at me for walking down the hallway she just mopped.) When I was wrestling my suitcase step by excruciating step into the new residence, someone came up and hauled it up to my room without even needing to say, "let me help you." That set the precedent and subsequent experience never fell short of it - when I needed help (which was often), people helped me willingly and without ostentation.

I found that the people I met were all very curious about Canada - the people, the lifestyle, the weather even... (note: there is a very good map on the walls of the Place Jean Jaurès metro station to show your friends where you're from.) My impression is that French people in general take more interest in other cultures - for example radio stations would have weekly programs on other countries like the U.S., Africa (which is not a country, I know), and China. On the whole they get more involved with everything - politics, saving the environment, student elections... There is a spiritual and artistic richness to the French way of life that I can't describe, but it is intensely fulfilling. I hope you will experience it and appreciate it.

And for the University of Waterloo students, an illustrative anecdote - I was once asked for student ID by the person who manages the computer labs, and not having received my Lyon 1 card yet, I explained that I was an exchange student and showed him my UWaterloo student card. Henceforth he addressed me as la grande bataille.

School life

Warning: math-related stuff ahead.

ISFA has the second biggest actuarial program in France. That said, the class I joined - the first year masters students - is less than 40 people. We had one classroom for all the classes, and the professors would come to teach. Everyone had to take the same courses, so I was automatically enrolled and didn't have to deal with choosing courses for myself. In fact I just randomly showed up during the week before classes started and filled out the registration form, but it's better to make an appointment. The director of academics had actually taken the time to email me about my original course selection, and everyone in his office was always patient and helpful for the whole length of my exchange.

The program at ISFA starts in third-year licence and goes on to two years of masters - before that the students would take preparatory courses for two years and basically do math and physics every single day. Then they write the three-day entrance exam for ISFA. The actuarial topics like life contingency and financial instruments don't come up until the second semester of first-year masters. Before that it's math and statistics.

And by math and statistics, they actually mean measure theory and analysis.

My first day in class, and it was simulation of random variables:

Professor: (writes λ (aire) on the board)
Me: (to my neighbour) "C'est quoi la λ?"
Neighbour: "La mesure de Lebesgue..."
Me: (faint)

It sounds horrifying but as long as you don't give up altogether, things do get better, and the professors and other students are more than willing to help you. My friends offered me their notes on measure theory from the year before, and everyone was always willing to explain words and notation I didn't know. The professors recommended English textbooks they thought would help me and even marked my finals first because I had to return to Canada soon after exams. The actuarial education is definitely very different and a lot more theoretical than the UWaterloo one, but very rewarding in its own way.

I had about 24 hours of class a week, but it's extra exhausting because some of the classes are four hours long. Every Tuesday morning from 8 to 12 I had an extended brain-breaking session of analysis, and then three hours of statistical inference after lunch. The students work really hard at home too, on practice exercises that the professors assign. (It's a good idea to do these, because I didn't, and trying to study four months of notes the day before the exam turned out to be... not a good idea.)

Besides being insanely strong academically, the people in my class were all very friendly, and close enough as a group that some of the guys would run around the classroom chasing each other. And spend the lunches copying movies and music off each other's laptops. (For some reason, Prison Break was really, really popular.) During class the talking always got kind of loud towards the back of the class, so if you want to actually hear what the professor is saying, sit towards the front.

The professors take their jobs very seriously. There may not be a lot of student-teacher interaction during the lectures but the professors are always very rigorous, and when tutorial comes around they walk around the class to see how you're doing and help you with the exercises. They also wrote really complete notes on the board for the math courses, although the other students told me that courses like insurance law are more oral lectures. The analysis professor especially was able to lecture and write on the board at the same time for two hours straight without once referring to his own notes, so his classes were a bit of a marathon, and during the last class when the students got loud as they discussed the questions the professor actually roared, "Doucement!" and struck terror into our hearts. Looking back it was a kind of psychological preparation for the final, but don't worry, there's a make-up session after classes finish for the year.

As for finals... don't slack off during the term. That doesn't mean you spend all your evenings and weekends studying, only that you need to keep up with the material.

And now, congratulations for making it to the very end of this long and incoherent report! Best of luck with the exchange, and I hope you will find it as fulfilling as I did.