Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL)

No. The great experience is to discover things once there.

My recommendation is to be open minded and to be prepared to be adaptable.

No. It's important to assist and interact with both teachers and local students, but this recommendation would be the same for anyone at any university.

The person who had to give me some orientation wasn't too kind with international students. They assumed we knew how things worked at the university but there are many different things we may not know. For example, at my home university it wasn't necessary to register for final exams but at Université Catholique de Louvain, at some of the faculties it was necessary to do it. It's important to give this information at the beginning.

At home I was living with my parents, so I didn't pay for housing issues. And finally, once in Belgium one of the great opportunities is discovering the surroundings so we tried to make the most of our stay.

I shared the apartment with native students (which helped me improve my French), we had a little garden, spacious rooms and rooms shared with others (such as the kitchen, living room...). In fact, I had both independence and social interaction with the flatmates.