Asklemmy

Have participated in two, one was the student came to live with us when I was in high school. The other was when I was in college.

In high school the kid came over for about two months and lived in our house. She did some classes at our high school and most of her time in class was at the University of Virginia.

In college the program had a house all the students stayed in and they took classes, ate in the cafeteria and basically just were like any other students.

I sort of dated one of them for a bit, she was from Sweden and spoke English better than I did.

Every single one of your questions is dependent on the exchange program. You should go to the program people and ask them. Since you know you want to do it, go ask them now; there is no "too early".

And especially if you plan to "live there", do research now. Does that mean you want to work there and stay after university? You're talking work authorizations, visas, possibly immigration. That is the realm of lawyers and you shouldn't take any advice from Lemmy users beyond "go do your research".

If your university offers such a program, there should be people at your university to answer any and all of these questions, not least because a lot of it depends on your university and the partner agreements they have.