<p>What do international students do during school vacations if they don’t travel back home? Does Bowdoin become a boring old ghost town or are there still some people there to hangout with?</p>
<p>Many visit friends at other colleges or stay with their friends’ families. It looks like Bowdoin only has two breaks when students must receive permission to stay on campus (Christmas and spring break). If you get permission to stay on campus, I’d imagine you’ll be hanging out by yourself or with any other international students who didn’t go home with their friends.</p>
<p>[Important</a> Housing Dates (Bowdoin - Residential Life)](<a href=“Residential Life | Bowdoin College”>Residential Life | Bowdoin College) </p>
<p>Read more about it here: <a href=“Residential Life | Bowdoin College”>Residential Life | Bowdoin College;
<p>Thanks! Very helpful information.</p>
<p>Not international, but we live pretty far away. S did not come home for Thanksgiving (flights too expensive). He visited a friend from HS at another school and also saw his sister at another school.</p>
<p>His roommate is a winter athlete, and he had a very short winter break (maybe 8 days?) due to training and the season. They housed all the winter athletes in one dorm so they didn’t have to keep several buildings open/heated. S gave permission for another athlete to move into his room during the winter break since he was gone. I imagine if they have international students or others who have no other place to go, they may have them move during the break if their dorm is not one that is open.</p>
<p>international students at bowdoin are also paired with host families in brunswick.</p>
<p>Wow…just when I was thinking that the situation is more or less the same everywhere – and that international students all over have the same basic set of options (with differences, of course, based on proximity to airports, size of the city/town where the college is located and other external factors that are obvious), this “host family” idea gets tossed out. That’s incredibly thoughtful and useful! What are the roles of the host families? Does it go so far as providing accommodations during breaks? (Even if it’s not quite that intensive, it still sounds like a great program that should be appealing to international students, particularly early on, and possibly a value to the host families as well.)</p>
<p>EDIT: <a href=“Dean of Students | Bowdoin College”>Dean of Students | Bowdoin College;
<p>i think the college provides housing during breaks for students who don’t go home. but holiday meals, things like that, are host family territory.</p>
<p>Some are compelled to go home with a classmate and then forced to participate in Jenga.</p>