<p>One thing I forgot to add about the host family arrangements for my daughter. (Unlike kirmum's niece - there was not a lot of detailed matching in the program my daughter took part in.) Smoking is very common in Spain, I would say much more common than in the US. My daughter cannot tolerate being around smokers, so she requested a non-smoking home and we made it clear to the program that this was a necessity for her. So if your student does not want to live in a smoking environment, they should emphasize this when they make their housing arrangments.</p>
<p>I want to clarify something about my D's study abroad program, where she is currently. The majority of students are with host families. The only ones who are put in apartments with roommates from the program are those studying architecture, of which my daughter is one. My guess is that the architecture students have long hours in the studio and that would not be as conducive to family stays. My daughter is in an apartment with two other girls, one who attends Wellesley and one who attends Tulane and my D attends Brown. They did not know one another ahead of time. She is down the block from her architecture studio.</p>
<p>The landlady for the small apartment building has befriended the girls in the apartment (they are the only ones in the program who are residing in this building). She has young adult children. She has taken my D to some places and in fact, my D was telling me today by phone that the landlady has offered to take us to some places by car (that are harder to go to by bus) when we are there next weekend. How nice is that? Family stays are great but for my D, the apartment has its advantages too. She has been able to have other students over, etc. and she can walk to everything, and not all those in home stays can do any of that. A week ago, however, she was staying with some French families in France because she was traveling on her own and went to visit French girls with whom she worked this past summer in France and so had native people to visit and wasn't in as much of a tourist mode that way. </p>
<p>JMMom, thanks for the laugh about the bedrooms. Which room you sleep in and with whom is the same issue (in my view), whether you live a single sex dorm room or coed apartment. You can sleep with whom you want and where you want and so the living arrangements do not determine that. However, as far as the original query as to being placed in a coed apartment goes, I think if the opposite sex are strangers as far as assigned apartment mates, this should be fine as it is not as if the boys are assigned shared rooms with the girls. Having boys and girls share common space in an apartment is not that different than boys living on the same hallway in a dorm a room away. And who you live with doesn't determine the romantic liasons.</p>