Host Family Letter

Hallooo:) Ich weiß, das gibt es schon ungefähr 100 mal auf dieser Seite, aber könnte sich bitte jemand die Zeit nehmen und meinen Brief verbessern? Ich sollte einen Brief an meine (noch nicht bekannte) Gastfamilie und Schule schreiben.

Dear host family/school,
I’m Julia and I would like to introduce myself with this letter. First of all: thank you for taking the time to read my letter!
It’s always been my dream to go to America one day and when I decided to do a year abroad I knew it had to be America. I am so glad and thankful to get the chance making such a great experience and I hope I will be your future host daughter/exchange student.

So as I already said my name is Julia. I live in XXX, in western Germany. I’m 14 years old and my birthday is on June 5th. When I arrive in America I will already be 15.
My mom’s name is XXX and my dad’s XXX. My mother is primary school teacher for German, Math and PE and my Dad once worked for a German bank but he has now retired from work. I only have one grandmother left who is 87. She is probably the fittest grandma I have ever seen. She lives in Cologne and we visit her often. She is my mom’s mother. All my other grandparents died before I was born. I have one sister and two brothers. My sister is 18 and her name is XXX, but everyone calls her XXX. She spent a year abroad in 2013/14 in XXX. She will graduate in 2016 and then probably study in XXX. My first brother, XXX, is 31. He studied history and German at the XXX University. My second brother is 27 and his name is XXX. He is floor manager at a German TV channel. Both of them don’t live with us anymore, but they do live in the same town as we do.
We also have a dog, named Hope. She is currently seven months old and we got her in March 2015. She is a dutch Kooikerhondje, a breed that is not very well-known. When you google it, you can find out a bit more about them. I will also upload some photos of her on the international Experience page. Hope is a very active and bright dog.
Our two guinea pigs live in a huge cage inside our house. The first one is five and the other one four ½ years old and they are called Felix and Kartoffel (engl. Potatoe).

I am currently a student at the XXX. My school is kind of special because we have a bilingual ranch for the Spanish language which I am also part of. We have normal Spanish classes but the subjects politics, history and geography are taught in Spanish as well. I have been learning Spanish for four years now and in 2013 we had an exchange with some students from San Sebastián for two weeks.
My favorite subjects are English (of course :D), Chemistry and Geography/Political Science/Economics.
When I will have finished school I either want to visit an American college or study in Germany. I’m not really sure what to study but I am really interested in economy, psycology and chemistry. Maybe not what you expect from a 14 year old girl :smiley:

Most of my friends are in my school. I love meeting my friends and do something. We go to the cinema, go shopping, learn for school together, go to festivals, just chill at home or in winter go ice-skating. We absolutely love being at the lake near our town in summer! I love my friends because they are always there for me and we can laugh about everything. When we are having a sleep over we usually stay up til 3am to talk and laugh. I always have a great time when I am around them and they make me feel happy and I really appreciate that.
I know it will be hard to leave them in Germany but the experience to be in America for a year is absolutely worth it.

One of my greatest hobbies is horseback riding. I do not do English riding, but Natural Horsemanship. I don’t know if you have already heard about it. It is a special kind of riding where you focus more on your horse. You do not use snaffle bits, but rope halters. In general it is about having a strong relationship and it is a much easier and understandable method for yout horse. I’ve been doing horseback riding for six years and I only did it because of fun and not win competitions. A while ago our riding stable moved about 70 miles away so me and my sister are not able to do it periodically anymore, but we still go there sometimes at the weekends.
Another great hobby of mine is playing piano. I have been taking lessons for nine years now and I started when I was five. Me and my sister have a private teacher that comes to us every week. One of my favorite composers is Ludovico Einaudi. I like playing modern songs or film music but I also like the classical ones like Händel or Mozart.
I also like some other sports like Badminton, Tennis and Baseball but I didn’t have time to try them out, especially Baseball, because there is no club near my city. I have done some archery and I really enjoyed it. Definetly something I want to start doing regulary sometime. I sometimes go swimming with my friends which is also really fun to me and if you are having a school swim team: I’m into it! :smiley:
My family and I, we go to Austria every easter holiday. We stay in this little town for two weeks and go skiing. We have been going there since I was little and even before I was born, my parents and siblings have been spending their holidays there. It is a small town with about 900 inhabitants and skiing there is amazing! You have the best view over the mountains.
I’ve been in our church’s choir for more than seven years. It was really fun, we did musicals every year and also played the Christmas story on Christmas Eve in the church.
I had a lot of fun being a part of the choir but because I had so much to do with school I needed to quit it. I’ve also been a acolyte for a long time. Me and my friends always served in church.

In my school we have this godparenthood for the new kids that come in 5th grade to our school. My history teacher asked me last year if me and three of my friends would like to do this job at her class and help the kids to ingetrate themselves in the new school and make it easier for them to get used to our everyday life in school because they just got out of primary school with 6-10 year old kids and now they are in a school with over 1300 students from age 10-18. I remember how I felt in my first few months here and I want to help them to have an easy start.
We sometimes meet in the afternoon and play games or cards together. That makes it easier for them to find friends in their first year and get in touch with others. We also go on school trips with them or solve problems together. They can ask us if they need any help and in the first weeks we always catched them up in their current room and led them to the laboratorys when they had biology for example because they couldn’t find the way by themselves. We try to strength their sense of community and tell them to take school serious. I absolutely love children, that is why I am doing this.

An usual school day in my life would look like this:
I always wake up at 7am and get ready for school. At 7:45 I meet my best friend XXX to cycle to school. At 8am, class starts. Our lunch break is from 12:30pm-1:30pm. After school has finished at 3pm, I cycle back home and do homework. After that I either meet my friends, practice piano, help in the household or do workouts. At around 8pm I help my mom to prepare supper. All the family usually eats togehter, except when somenone’se not at home. I really appreciate it to eat with the whole family because it is the one time a day when everyone comes together. After supper I usually take a shower and get myself ready for the night. I then lie in my bed and text my friends, watch a movie or check what I have to do the next day. On weekends I also like spending my nights at my friends’ houses.

So now it is time to describe my character. Because that is really hard to do on my own, I asked my friends and family about it.
So my mom told me I am reliable. I never break the curfew and if I want to stay longer wherever I am, I first ask my parents for permission. Most of my friends said I am humorous and that I love to laugh. I personally think I am very honest and because I am a really bad liar it would not be a good choice for me to lie to people :D. I love children and animals. I would also say I do a lot for school and I am ambicious. One of my friends told me that she likes the way I explain things to her, for example when she had missed something in class. I am kind to other people, doesn’t matter if they are strangers or friends of mine. I do not judge anyone because of their appereance or skin color. I treat everyone in the same way and that is very important to me. I am vegetarian so I don’t eat meat. If that is okay for you, I would like you to respect that.
One bad quality I have is that I am not really patient. It is something that annoys me myself but maybe the year abroad will help me to work on this.

I also hope that the time I will spend in America will help me to find out more about myself and get more confident. I want to be more independent and stronger. Getting to know a new culture and new people may be weird in the first weeks but I am sure that I am going to be able to integrate myself as well as I can. I want to improve my English and also be prepared for my future life. I’ve always wanted to live in America and for one year, this dream comes true. I’ve seen so many stuff about America in Social Media like Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and more, that I now want to see it with my own eyes. It is such an interesting country and spending 10 months there will probably open a door to a whole new world for me. To live in an American family and get to know the American school system will be such an enrichement for me. I want to find out more about the country and the traditions there.

I am very happy you read the letter and I hope I could give you a quick view into my life. Again, it would be an honor for me to live in your family/go to your school, with many beautiful memories and a precious friendship!

Sincerely yours,
Julia

Also ich habe das jetzt mal durchgelesen und ich finde ihn eigentlich echt gut :slight_smile:

was ich zu verbessern hätte wären die „:D“ Smileys und das du am Anfang so viel über deine Familie erzählst. es kann natürlich auch sein das deine organisation meint das soll da mit machen:)

und ich würde nochmal deine Englischlehrerin drüber gucken lassen weil ich glaube da waren ein paar fehler drinne sowohl Spelling als auch Grammatik :slight_smile:

aber ansonsten finde ich den sehr gut!

Wenn du das alles so selber geschreiben hast Respekt.
Meiner ist viel kürzer und mein Englisch ist auch nicht mit deinem zu vergleichen.
Ich denke mit diesem Brief wirst du schnell eine Familie finden.

Ok also erstmal danke :slight_smile: Meine Organisation hat extra gesagt, wir sollen viel über unsere Familie reden (also mit Großeltern usw.)
Aber danke für den Tipp, hab’s meiner Englischlehrerin nochmal gezeigt :slight_smile:

Wow danke, das ist echt nett von dir :slight_smile: