<p>My daughter is studying in Berlin second semester. She does not want to live with a family, and she has learned that the dorm is not really conveniently located. She is looking for an apartment through some contacts she has in Berlin. She was approached this week with an pportunity to move into a situation with 2 other girls and a guy. She says this co-ed type of living arrangement is common for european study abroad. I am curious to know what other's experiences have been with this. I am a little uneasy with this co-ed arrangement ... but perhaps I am worrying too much.</p>
<p>Daughter did overseas and students in program were housed in local apts., generally 4 to an apt. Kids did not know each other ahead of time, apts. were assigned by the school and only one ended up single-sex. Each had their own bedroom that locked but shared bathroom, kitchen and living room. Seems to have worked out fine. More hookups occurred across apts than within apts.</p>
<p>I don't understand what the issue is with co-ed living, myself. They'll probably have separate bedrooms and everything. What exactly is your concern?</p>
<p>Also, why doesn't she want to live with a local family? Living German life first hand is the best possible way for her to have a great experience, whether she's studying language, culture, or something different. It's a very unique opportunity that she won't likely have again. I would urge you to encourage her to re-consider that option. It's a nerve-wracking idea, I know, but the benefits are huge.</p>
<p>Host family living can also turn out to be a real detriment to enjoying your stay. Have known kids who did host family and had a wonderful time and others who had little or no contact with host family and had no one their age to hang around at night with. This was family's choice as they saw this as strictly a "business arrangement" and were not as helpful as hotel or B&B personell would be. In another case, teenage son was "having trouble, hanging with the wrong crowd" which caused huge fights in the family and the father appeared to be an alcoholic who spent most time after dinner drinking and watching TV and didn't want anyone watching with him. In another, student couldn't watch TV after about 9PM cause "Dad" had porn on and student was female. Very uncomfortable for each of these kids and tough to get arrangements changed once classes started.</p>
<p>My son decided to move in with three 20-something European women after week three in the hostel. The apartment was in a dodgy part of London, miles away from school. The women screamed at each other instead of speaking. A lot. After school, to keep himself busy between 5 and 9 pm, he bought a basketball and stood by the outdoor neighborhood courts until a few of the players asked him to join the pick-up games. On any given day, there were a half dozen games going. He was good enough to play again and again. All of the other players were North African, as was the large supporting crowd. At 10 pm he went out to dinner with the Europeans--and on to a dance spot.</p>
<p>He was 18 at the time. Sooooo not something I would have done but ya know...it's his life. The cost was the same as the hostel. The women still keep in touch with him.</p>
<p>My daughter is studying abroad right now and is in an apartment that the program arranged and assigned her roommates. Nobody knew one another ahead of time. They are all female. It wouldn't really bother me if it was coed as long as they did not have to share bedrooms. Once they are in college, there are boys on their floor in the next room in the dorms, so I don't see much difference. My D is on a varsity sport team and every weekend when she travels to races and also during a winter training camp, there are both boys and girls staying in a condo together, just not the same bedrooms.</p>
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<p>She was approached this week with an pportunity to move into a situation with 2 other girls and a guy. She says this co-ed type of living arrangement is common for european study abroad>></p>
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<p>I have to tell you, it's not uncommon here in the US either. DS lives in an off campus apartment...four people...two guys and two girls. It has worked out very well. Same arrangement last year...two guys, two girls.</p>
<p>My D studied in Italy, and was supposed to have a family stay as part of the program. The family turned out to be a single woman who provided several rooms in her apartment for foreign students. So it wasn't as much a family situation as my D might have wanted but it did work out. She ended up visiting her host's family in a small village in Southern Italy that never would have happened if she had been staying in a dorm.</p>
<p>As a parent, one concern would be whether or not the living situation is arranged by or through your home college. If it is and there is some critical problem, then my expectation would be that the home college would have some level of responsibility to address problems with the living situation. There is no leverage here in the U.S. if your student's living situation is arranged completely independent from the home college that is sponsoring the study abroad program.</p>
<p>I'm with the OP. Thanks, y'all. D wants to do a Maymester Total Immersion in Spain this coming May through her college and it has homestays. </p>
<p>I did in fact picture (with the help of brochures) a "host family" with one student. A Spanish version of the Cleaver's possibly ( Dad and stay at home home with two fresh scrubbed kids) and certainly not a for-profit "boarding house" of International Traveling Drug and Slave Traders.</p>
<p>I will be paying more, lots more attention .</p>
<p>I lived with two guys in grad school and frankly I felt a little safer for it. Not that I lived in a dangerous town or anything (far from it) but it was a plus.</p>
<p>My kids have both done immersions in Spain during the summer. My son spent three weeks in Valencia and four weeks in Sevilla after his first year of college, and my daughter spent four weeks in Sevilla after her junior year of high school. It seemed that the host families are not necessarily traditional two parent families with kids, and they often are single women (with or without kids). They can vary as to how welcoming they are. The family my son stayed with in Valencia was much poorer than the woman he stayed with in Sevilla, but were much nicer to him. The woman in Sevilla was very cheap and kept turning off his fan while he was sleeping at night (this was the summer of 2003, when there was a terrible heat wave in Europe, and Sevilla was VERY hot!) She said that it "wasn't healthy to sleep with a fan on!?!" My daughter's host mom was a single woman with older kids not at home and a middle school age daughter at home. She had a very spacious house by Sevilla standards, and had one or two other girls (from France and Switzerland) staying along with my daughter. My kids both had great experiences in Spain, both as far as becoming more fluent in Spanish and living in a totally different culture.</p>
<p>Maybe the idea of staying in the dorms should be reconsidered. European cities have great mass transit. Even if the dorms aren't adjacent to the campus maybe they're just a short mass transit ride away. An advantage to the dorms is the ability to mix with a lot of students the same age as your D.</p>
<p>I've done various living arrangement overseas - they all have advantages and disadvantages. The first when I was 17, I stayed with a French family. The Institute where I was going to had a list of families. My parents arranged a vacation so we could meet a few ahead of time. My family took their responsibilities. I spent weekends picking grapes at their cottage, went to parties with their 27 year old son, learned alot about architecture and decorative arts as the father was head of the local historical museum. </p>
<p>My second experience was one summer at a Goethe Institute. There you chose what level of service you wanted. (Including number of showers!) I stayed with a widow, meals were at the Institute or through vouchers at local restaurants - it was much less of an experience.</p>
<p>Later early in our married life we lived in Germany both sharing an apartment with other foreigners, and another German and on our own. Sharing with the German was the most fun. Though eventually I was ready for an apartment on our own! Living on your own teaches you different things than living with a family. You become much more aware of what's available at local stores and the pace of living there. (You might as well go hiking or museuming on Sundays in Germany because nothing is open!)</p>
<p>Sharing an apartment among students of both sexes is very common in German universities and should not cause any more problems than any other arrangement with people you do not know in advance. Typically each person has his or her own bedroom and they share the common rooms, kitchen etc.--no assumptions are made about what sort of relationships might develop among the occupants--they might agree to take turns with cooking for each other but most Germans eat cold cuts in the evenings and have their hot meal in the University cafeteria in the afternoons.</p>
<p>My niece has spent this semester with an incredible family in Paris. She is dreading leaving, it's been the most wonderful time of her life! We spent a lot of time filling out, and carefully considered, the forms they used to match the student and family. The match was outstanding and the experience better than any other leaving arrangement I could imagine. I think it's worth taking the chance on a family. She truly joined the culture. Got to spend time with family friends and their college aged kids, travelled with them on a family vacation to meet extended family, enjoyed their hobbies with them and so much more.</p>