Don't live with a host family. Usually, it's me spontaneously visiting my friends, though sometimes they visit me and sometimes we talk about meeting through text or phone. There is a bit of a language barrier for sure, though it gets better everyday. Having been in country for a year now, the language barrier much smaller than a few months ago, and I think PST prepared us really well in that regard. Not to say I'm anywhere near fluent in the language here, but slowly we're all getting better, and of course my friends are also getting better at understanding my attempts at their language. In fact I think language provides another useful thing to talk about. I sometimes ask questions about grammar or new words I don't know. Last, there are people around my age (early 20s) but for whatever reason most of my friends are a good deal older.