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Comment by patrickyeon | Hacker News Reader

When people start whining about events or programs like this, I like to send them off to read "When I Moved Abroad"[1], a blog post by that was like flipping a switch in my mind that suddenly made these things make so much more sense.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/it/2013/03/29/when-i-moved-abroad/

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As someone who has lived for fairly long periods in a country that is not mine, this is exactly the sort of thing I seek to avoid. I try to hang out with the people from the region, not people who I already can speak to in a familiar language. I try to absorb the local cultural contrasts and not try to shoehorn them into my own. ("Tell me again what the traditional Garistan Christmas cake is? " -- Maybe they don't celebrate Christmas? Could it just be possible that they belong to another culture / religion?)

Always sticking with your own lot and never completely opening up to a new culture (in my opinion) isolates you and makes you look standoffish.

That made up travel blog is silly. As another person that has lived in countries other than where I grew up, it sounds to me like a recipe for ghettoisation and continuing isolation rather than a good strategy for a happy life in another country.

As someone who's lived a little in another country, I'm not really impressed by made up analogies like this.

I don't really have a problem with women-only 'spaces', anyway, as long as they don't interfere with my schedule - like going to the gym and finding out that they are having a women-only day/evening.

(When I lived abroad I didn't know anyone in that city who was from my own country, during that whole stay. There were people from my own country, but I didn't bother to seek them out. The closest I got was other foreigners.)

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