Based on an ethnographic case study done in an all-white, rural middle school, this article examines the students' experience with and interpretation of an international education program implemented with a hope of providing more global/international contents to the curriculum. The study shows that these students interpreted other cultures introduced by the program in relation to their own culture and their own identity formation. The process of local "othering" within the student school community was analogous to that of the students' collective "othering" of unfamiliar non-US cultures. The idea of US-centrism based on US consumer culture became the main standard against which the "otherness" of different cultures were measured. The findings show how prejudice and stereotyping of global others derive from both the everyday process of differentiation in local home cultures and defense of national culture. (Contains 3 notes.)