STUDY ABROAD TIPS AND RESOURCES.

I realise this is possibly a little bit late, as most people have either already started their time abroad or are just about to, but maybe you'll be able to get at least something from it. I recently returned from a year studying at Université Paris-Sorbonne IV, and I have some tips and resources that will hopefully make your time abroad a little bit easier, less stressful, and less expensive.


(Edit: I've written this from the perspective of a British student studying abroad but in theory most of the tips could also apply to non-British students going abroad, or students coming to Britain.)

BORING (BUT USEFUL) TIPS FOR BORING (BUT IMPORTANT) STUFF:

• Set up a foreign bank account if you can, and as soon as possible! Some people continue to use their British accounts but they incur a lot of small fees (which I imagine build up quite a bit over the course of a year) so it's more cost-efficient to go through the struggle of setting up a foreign account. Not only that, but in France I know that 95% of the time they require you to have a French account to pay rent from, and I assume that's the case in other countries too. Nonetheless, if your British bank has a partner bank in the country you're going to it might be a good idea to do some research to see what kind of fees they charge etc. 
• I used Crédit Agricole, and if you're in the Paris area, there's a fully English-speaking branch in Saint-Denis that deals with everything online (apart from the initial meeting), which means you don't have to keep going into a branch to do everything.

• USE TRANSFERWISE! PLEASE! I am a huge advocate for this service and I'll give you a quick explanation as to why. On my first international transfer of admin fees/deposit/rent I needed to send 1500€ to a French account from my English account, bank-to-bank, and I paid a £10 fee. "That's not a lot for such a big transfer," you may be thinking. You'd be right I suppose, but in actual fact I lost £70 in the transfer as well as that £10. It might not seem much compared to the £1,000+ I was sending but imagine if I did that each time I needed to send my student loan across to my French account. No thanks. Banks advertise offering "free" transfers across currencies but in fact they use a standard exchange rate that is always really, really bad. Fair enough, they need to make money, but NOT FROM ME, SIR. I looked for a cheaper way to send money and discovered the glory that is TransferWise. I'm not being paid to say this (I wish I was) but my transferring was TRANSFORMED. You always transfer money according to the real, current exchange rate, and you're charged a tiny (and I mean TINY) fee depending on the amount you're transferring - I've sent fairly big sums and never paid more than a £10 fee. If you're interested in the details, I'll give you an analogy so you can understand how it works. Effectively, each country/currency has its own "pot". When I want to transfer £1,000 to my French account, my £1,000 goes into the "GBP pot" and it comes out of the "EUR pot" as 1186.01€ and goes into my account. According to the current exchange rate, £1,000 is 1191.73€ - meaning a 5,73€ or £4.98 fee was charged. (They explain how they calculate fees on the website if you want to check.) That's it. Current exchange rate and low fees? Why wouldn't you use it?
• I have a sign-up link that you can use to send up to £500 for free so to be honest, what are you waiting for?

• Sort out a phone or SIM card. Personally I just made sure my iPhone was unlocked and bought bought myself a French SIM card as it was the easiest option for me - I got to keep using my regular phone, all my contacts were stored there, you get the idea. Nevertheless, I am on Three in the UK, and Three has this service called "Feel At Home", which basically means you can use your data in certain countries without paying any extra roaming fees, which is great. I continued to use that SIM for the first month until I got a cheaper local one. (Someone I know continued to use her Three SIM throughout her time abroad, but I found that I often needed a French phone number during my time in Paris for paperwork etc., so I'm not sure how she did that.)
• I used Free Mobile - it was 19,99€ (£16/17) a month for unlimited Internet and a bunch of other useful stuff, on a monthly rolling contract. Considering I was paying more than that for my Three SIM I figured it was worth it to switch. If you're in Paris, there was a Free shop (kinda felt like an Apple store) by Madeleine.
• Of course, you can also buy yourself a cheap little no-data phone, but personally I think a SIM works best as honestly, having data to use for Google Maps while you're getting lost in the first few weeks is VERY useful.

• Accommodation! It's early September now which means I very much hope you've got your housing sorted, just for your own sake, but if not, there's definitely still time! Be wary of scams when looking online (particularly for Paris - it's something the city is infamous for) and try to view a house before you go if you can. Some friends of mine didn't find places to live until weeks into our university term and I was stressed out on their behalf, so I can't imagine what it was like for them. For your own sanity, try to sort it as soon as possible. The five main options are: a university hall of residence, an apartment/house with other people (either people you know or people you've just met, or you moving into a spare room etc.), a studio apartment, or living with a family or an older person (usually you live there for free, in exchange for doing certain chores that the older person can't do themselves). I'm not going to go into detail about each one but just consider what you want out of your time abroad and try to figure out which one would suit you best.
• For the record, in Paris there are VERY few university residences, and foreign students don't even get priority (which is weird to me because at UK unis all the international students get top priority).
• I lived in an apartment with two girls I met on a forum (this doesn't sound dodgy at all) (don't worry we communicated on Facebook etc. beforehand) and we found it through New York Habitat. NYH was an English-speaking agency that mostly offered holiday homes, but we were allowed to stay long-term. If I'm honest, I wouldn't use them again as their admin fees were extraordinarily and unjustifiably high, we mostly just used them because their process was fairly straightforward and they happened to be offering an apartment we liked the look and price of. Also, they haven't helped us too much in getting our deposit back (which our landlady is holding for no reason), so that's put me off advertising them to others.
• For fellow Paris/France-dwellers, I'd recommend looking at Lodgis, Appartager and Colocation - the latter two are like spareroom.co.uk, but they're also the ones most likely to have scams, so watch out.

• Caf - unfortunately this is only for people living in France so soz about that if you're going elsewhere, just skip to the next point. Caf is a housing benefit you're possibly entitled to (some landlords don't allow it for some reason), and the amount you get is according to where you live, how many people you live with, how big your accommodation is, and all things like that. If you're willing to fill out the beast of the paperwork it requires, it is definitely worth it. Mine wasn't completed until June because my landlady took forever to sign it, but eventually, in July I received a hefty 1000€, as it had built up from when I first started filling in the forms. I was pleased, as I'm sure you can imagine. That being said, I'd definitely suggest you start filling in the paperwork as soon as you can, because it is annoying and long and kind of difficult to decipher, and the sooner it's sent off, the better. Top tip: they said they needed a French translation of my birth certificate but I just sent my English one off and hoped for the best and it seemed to work. Make of that what you will.

• Familiarise yourself with the layout of where you live. It sounds weird but just looking at where I lived on a map really helped me figured out which way was up at the beginning, so maybe it'll help you too. It also helped minimise stress because I had a vague idea of where everything was.

• Relating to the last point - familiarise yourself with public transport too, if there is any. Check out what kind of passes they have or if they have any student discounts, and whether they're worth it for the amount you'd be using it, or if it'd still be worth it if you're only there for one semester instead of a year, etc.
• In Paris the pass is the Imagine-R, which uses the Navigo system. If you go to any station and ask for a form they'll give you one on the spot, so you just need to go home, fill it in, attach all the extra stuff, send it off and voilà, you will soon have a Métro card. The card itself is specific to students and works out at 37,10€ a month for ten months, which I calculated to be about £220. (There's also an option to pay it all upfront I believe.) It might seem like a lot but it's valid for all zones, all forms of public transport, and it's unlimited use for a full year. 
• Regarding travel, if you're in France I suggest you sign up to the SNCF newsletter. You get a substantial number of emails, but occasionally they'll email you about a flash sale, and SNCF run all the mainline trains in the country (including Eurostar and north-to-south trains).

• Sign up online to EasyJet and other airlines - they'll email you if there's a sale on! Gotta get those cheap flights if you can, right?

• In terms of admin, France is slow and annoying and requires all forms of paperwork you could possibly own. Presumably other countries also require certain documents, so if I were you I would bring literally every single document you own, including: multiple identity/passport photos, your actual passport, driving license, your home and host university acceptance letters (and by that I mean your home university saying you've been accepted into your host university, not your original uni letter...I assume the host uni won't care about your UCAS acceptance paper LOLOL), your birth certificate, utility bills and bank statements. Not only this, but I recommend you photocopy everything twice - but obviously keep everything in a safe place - it wouldn't be great to lose your birth certificate. (Ha, who does that?...Who does that...)

MILDLY LESS BORING TIPS AND RESOURCES:

• Home comforts, my friends. Sure, France has some incredible food, and I'm used to non-English food and brands, what with my family having lived in Switzerland since I was eleven (and we often do our food shopping in France), but there are certain English home comforts I just wanna have with me at all times. I'm making a list of a few things that just aren't the same or don't exist at all in other countries, so if you're weird like me and care about this kind of thing, take a read and stock up before you leave, or get your mum to send some to you ASAP:
• Teabags. Right, lemme tell you a story, one time I'd run out of English tea and went to Carrefour and bought their own brand tea, and let's get this straight, I buy own brand stuff ALL THE TIME, but this tea was bad. Like, so bad. I would put three teabags in the mug and just leave them in. IT WAS TOO WEAK. Obviously if you like weak tea then this wouldn't be a problem for you...but if you drink weak tea then to be honest I'd like for you to leave my blog right now.
• Baked beans. A lot of people love Heinz but I'm a Branston gal (I was converted a few years ago and it's been a wild ride since), and neither brand is available in France. (Occasionally they do appear but it's rare and they also cost more than any tin of baked beans should ever cost. The POINT of beans is that they're cheap, come on.)
• Good cheddar. Look. I've lived in Switzerland - arguably the cheese capital of the world - intermittently for ten years, and I can confirm that good cheddar just does not exist outside of Britain. In part it's because outside of the UK I'm pretty sure everyone views our cheese as flavourless and gross but they evidently have not tried extra mature cheddar. I was lucky to have a Marks & Spencer near my uni, so I would buy my cheese from there as a little indulgence.
• Squash. You won't find any blackcurrant squash outside of the UK. I know in France they have their own version (they have their "sirop") but it's just not the same. Sometimes you need squash, y'know?
• It's important not to be super anglocentric and expect everything in the supermarket to look and taste like it does back home, because that's just not going to happen. Buying and eating local food is a big part of experiencing a country's culture, so make sure you try stuff and buy food from the local supermarket!

• Something else to consider is medication. Paracetamol and ibuprofen do not exist in other countries by the same name, so make sure you either buy some while you're in the UK or look up the non-English name so that you know what it's called in your host country!

• Adaptors. My super top tip for you is to buy an adaptor and then plug a British extension lead into it so that you have multiple UK sockets available at one time.

• Birthday cards! This is a strange one and not particularly important, but in your host country you may find they do not sell birthday cards. If you want to send an English-worded card to family or friends back home you could use Moonpig or Funky Pigeon. 

• I found Erasmusu to be a great online resource. You can look for people going to your uni, you can find people to flat-hunt with, make friends, and even find yourself a small job.

• Third Year Abroad is filled with experiences from people who are either on or have finished time abroad, so there are a tonne of other tips and stories too - it's worth a read!

I'm sorry this post was so long but hopefully the information will be useful to at least a few of you. I know if I'd had a resource last summer that was as (hopefully) comprehensive as this, I would've found it really helpful. Remember that moving to a new country is daunting and often a bit of a struggle, but it's a huge learning experience and I guarantee that the satisfaction you feel once you've sorted yourself out is incredible. If you have any questions at all (or even just want to chat/have some world-class #bantz) I am pretty much always on Twitter, so tweet me @giordizzle and I'll get back to you within about 0.0001 seconds.

See you next time!

Georgia