I officially arrived at Université Aix-Marseille on January 15th but, due to the semester clash that I talked about in one of my previous posts, it's taken a while for me to feel like I've really settled in. Still being enrolled in another university and having to revise for exams there is a surprisingly insurmountable obstacle when trying to find your feet in a new place. After over a month of being an officially enrolled student in Aix I finally feel like I live here, and I'm extremely happy about it.
Some people believe that a year abroad is merely an excuse for students to travel to lots of foreign cities, make new, multi-national friends and enjoy a warmer climate than that of the UK for 8 months at the expense of the European Union. Up until about two months ago, I was one of those people. Imagine my dismay when I remembered that I was actually going to be examined on the content of the lectures that had been filling the time not spent at the beach or eating pizza. None of my posts on this blog have really focused on the academia of my Erasmus experience. This is because I haven't. Don't worry; University of Bristol hasn't either. While they do require that we attend all our classes, the focus of the year abroad is very much absorbing the culture and the language of our host countries. How well I've managed to decipher the works of German idealist philosophers during my time on Erasmus is not something my tutors prioritise, which is why the results of my exams have no impact on my Bachelor's degree.