Living far away from home is not a big deal for me since I have done 1 st year of my university in Singapore, followed by Dubai for my 3 rd semester. S P Jain gave me such a wonderful opportunity by accepting me to go to France for exchange program on my 4 th semester. I chose Lille instead of Paris because of many stories and experiences from other previous exchange students. I compared all the information, Lille seems more like a student environment, according to my research, Lille is one of the biggest student regions in France regards of amount of student on that area and IESEG campus in Lille is the main campus and Paris is the branch one.
I have never been to Europe before; my excitement by knowing that I will spend 6 months in France is just unexplainable. I heard many cultural stuff that still very strength in Europe, especially French.
As what I heard, all of that is true, from how French people behave, French is one of the biggest gastronomy city in the world, from the bagguete French long traditional bread until its divine wine from one of the most famous wine maker regions in the world, Bordeaux. I spent Christmas and New Year together with them, I felt so mesmerize how they celebrate Christmas with awesome traditional French food and wine with their big family and they even gave me a Christmas gift as well which was so lovely.
All of this fascinate feeling of mine was simply because back home I never celebrate Christmas, so that was like a new thing from me. Looking into location perspective, Lille is the northest area in France, it shares border with Belgium. As an international student, you would like to travel as much as you could in order to be able discover Europe more; Lille has perfect location for this.
Look at the map of Europe; Lille literally has good location to discover Europe because it is near Belgium, Netherlands and also 45 minutes train to Paris. I have found being in Lille with lesser expense of living cost compare to Paris is giving me a chance to save money more for travelling.
