To maintain its international outlook, Notre Dame University-Louaize (NDU) hosts a number of exchange students from all over the world. We caught up with three of them from the Institut Catholique d'Études Supérieures (ICES) in France as they discuss their experiences at NDU: Marie-Esperance Picard Destelan and Delphin Dugué who are both studying English, and Louis de Lorgeril who is studying Law.
What brings you to Lebanon in general and NDU in particular?
Louis: Our university in France gave us the opportunity to do one semester abroad. And I chose to do it here in Lebanon because the Middle East in general was really interesting place and I really wanted to go there and understand it and not just to study it but to live there.
Delphin: Yes I think Lebanon is quite an unknown place in Europe, and every university we had the opportunity to go to was the same because I’d never had the chance to go to any of the countries, except Ireland, so they were more or less on the same level when we had to choose. Because Lebanon is quite an unknown place in France, I thought it would be nice to experience a culture I could not get elsewhere.
Marie-Esperance: I think discovering something completely new played a part for me as well. In France we often hear about the Middle East but not especially in the best way, but when you speak to people in France about Lebanon – because a lot of French people, or even Lebanese people are in France because of the history that they have together – people always say they love it and it’s really nice. I wanted to discover the place for myself and make my own decision.
How does the education here differ from France?
Marie-Esperance: Here it’s an American system of education, so it differs because in France we have a lot more hours per week. We are in really small numbers in class. The relationships between teachers and students are very different. The way people work, because, we’ve had our midterms, and the exams and the essays are very different.
Louis: For me the main difference is that when we arrived we could choose our courses. In France, we cannot do that. It’s interesting because even if your major is, like mine, in law you can take a number of different courses to learn more about other things.
Delphin: I was really glad to see that I could take all the courses I wanted, regardless of the Faculty. I think it’s a really nice thing to let students choose the path they want to take. But in the same way I think sometimes it’s also quite interesting to have courses that you were not expecting at the beginning and when you are forced to go to them you find you have some interests you would not have discovered otherwise.
What, if anything at all, do you enjoy most about being here at NDU and more broadly in Lebanon?
Louis: The campus is very big, compared to what we have in France. It’s very nice the location, especially with the view of the sea.
Marie-Esperance: For me the ability to visit everything. I try to do something, go visit somewhere, almost every weekend. I think Lebanon is such a beautiful country with wonderful views, even here on campus. It’s a small country so it’s quite easy to go everywhere. It’s funny, whenever we want to do something, we visit somewhere, we go to a museum or something, but when we think about France, the place we go to university, the city, we don’t know it because we don’t really do that every weekend. The weather has been changing a lot since we came here: it’s raining a lot and then it’s very sunny, but it’s been sunnier this past week. It’s really nice, and I love it. The fact that there’s a lot of rubbish is another thing, I know it’s a bit of a problem here, and the contrast between the two, especially on the beach, is striking.
Delphin: I don’t think I feel a real difference between being in Lebanon and being in France, because as Marie-Esperance said, even if we don’t take the time to get acquainted with the cities we know in France, there is beauty everywhere, and you have things to discover everywhere. Some of the landscapes and cities in Lebanon make me think about the French Riviera or Corsica, or the southwest of France, so I think the only difference is that I don’t speak French. I met a girl in the cinema course I take who lived in Nigeria for 10 years, and we were agreeing on the fact that we don’t really feel at home when she’s in Lebanon, nor when I’m in France.
What’s something that surprised you about being here?
Delphin: I think it’s something I will look out for to every time I go abroad, because it was the same in England. People pay attention to you. You can be asked “what did you do this weekend” while in France, unless you’re very good friends with them, people won’t ask you that. Here everyone is ready and willing to help you. Our Lebanese Writers teacher told us that in Lebanon you are never really alone, because there is always a neighbor, or a colleague, or a friend who is willing to help if you are in need. Even if you’re not in need actually (Delphin Laughs). I think it’s something really different, it might be a difference between the East and the West, but the biggest difference I felt was in people’s behavior.
Louis: I have noticed a big difference; in France many students don’t have cars. But here every student has one, sometimes really nice ones, and nobody walks, so I think public transport in general is a big difference between France and Lebanon.
Marie-Esperance: Public transport yes, traffic definitely, it seems like everybody has a good car, and big cars especially. When I came here, I had no real expectation or idea, because I didn’t really know anything about Lebanon. But I would say in France, public transportation is very common, and coming here “Oh! There’s a bus, let’s take the bus,” I know Lebanese people don’t normally take the bus, but we do. It was fine. And taking taxis, in France, I never take taxis; we have the bus, the train, public transport. So yeah, traffic, transport, big cars as well.
Do you feel supported in your studies, if so how?
Marie-Esperance: Yeah, I do feel supported. Like I said, a big difference is the relationship between the teachers and the students. Here the teachers are very close to the students, so you can ask them anything. The teachers really listen to what you have to say. I don’t know about Louis, but Delphin and I have courses with barely ten students so it’s quite easy to speak to the teachers, it’s very open.
Louis: For me, the teachers are very kind to me, and sometimes if I have difficulties in English for example, they’re happy to help me, so it’s very cool. And even the other students, when the teachers speak in Arabic, the students translate for me either in English or French.
Delphin: I don’t have much to add, but I think it’s quite hard to ask this question in an institutional way, because what we say for one teacher we can’t necessarily say for another. I love teachers who break the molds of education. I think a teacher with great “common sense” as they call it, is Joseph Hosni, who teaches film theory. His course is once a week, it’s three hours long, and when I wake up I know that I will have three great hours.
Do you guys have any memories of your time here that will stick with?
Marie-Esperance: I can think of every time we visited something, but I think a time that was funny, but also quite scary, was just when I arrived in Lebanon. I took a taxi, and it started raining so hard, the road closed because of the flooding. The taxi driver was very nice, thank god, but he didn’t know exactly where NDU was. He took me to the road at the bottom of Zouk Mosbeh and then he asked me where it was, and I said “well it’s the first time for me too” (Marie-Esperance laughs). It was a bit of a nightmare, especially because it was raining so much, so it took me about an hour and a half to come from the airport to here. He had no idea where he was, I had no idea where I was, my phone didn’t work, but we asked around and we finally found the place. Looking back on it now though, it’s quite funny. The others were already here, so I was well supported when I arrived.
Delphin: I think mine is… I’m not sure if it’s because of Lebanon, but it was a personal experience that was really nice: the first time I went to a bar with the guys from my courses. It’s in Beirut, and above the bar there are colorful flats. I have a terrible sense of direction even in France, so I don’t know where it was exactly, but I fell in love with the place. It was a little old fashioned, sort of 1970’s, with disks of the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones. People were really kind to me, and they came and spoke with me either in French or in English. And it was the first time I went to the bar knowing that I had everything to discover in the city, in the country, and about the people around me. I knew nothing about them, but it was really nice. It sounds a bit silly, but it’s like a second birth because you get to rediscover things you thought you’d never be able to experience for the first time again.
Louis: The first weekend I was here. I was in the dorms, and I saw on maps that there was a monastery nearby. So I decided to go there, and just to get there I had to walk along the road. It wasn’t far, only about half an hour, maybe a little less, and I felt like discovering a little. As I walked there, there were so many cars, so much traffic, so I was a little scared, but when I arrived, it was worth it. I could see the sea on one side and the mountains on the other, it was beautiful. Walking back to the dorms, I saw the sunset, and it was fantastic.