I really want to study abroad my junior year of university. I was reading on my school's study-abroad program website that international students were placed in a dorm with other international students. Does anyone else think that this idea is, to an extent, counterintuitive? I believe that international students should be interspersed with domestic students. I had a friend who studied abroad in high school, and they lived with a family and partook in cultural traditions, etc. I think that's the correct way to go--cross-cultural exposure, even in your off hours. If all the international students are living together, does anyone else thing that might lead to a tendency to cloister up (out of homesickness, anxiety from being in a new environment, desire for familiarity, etc) in the "domestic wing," thus polarizing the "foreign kids" from everyone else? Not only would that bring tension socially, that would sorta defeat the purpose of studying abroad.

I mean, I'm sure it all generally works out. But I just think it would be more effective to live mixed up with everyone else. Someone from Spain is staying in my dorm hall this year, and they live with other domestic students. I think it helps a lot in order to integrate them socially, and to expose them to cultural behaviour they would have otherwise missed out on (i.e. miscellaneous things that occur on the cuff, only observed in the off-hours inside a dorm).