Mein host family letter :)

Ich hab gerade endlich endlich meinen host family letter fertig geschrieben!
Bis ich alles abschicken muss, hab ich ja noch ein bisschen Zeit, deswegen kommt jetzt hier erstmal nur eine vorläufige Version rein, an der ich sicherlich noch Kleinigkeiten verbessern werde - wer Vorschläge hat, immer her damit! :)

Dear host family!

Thank you for taking time to read my letter in which I want to introduce my life and myself.

My name is Hannah and I am 15 years old. Going abroad has been one of my biggest dreams since almost two years. You as my future hostfamily are a playing a very important role in making this dream come true now. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity of getting to know a whole new culture and life style in Canada which I hope will be a life-changing experience for me.

My hometown, ***, is located in northern Germany between Hamburg and Berlin. With about 90,000 inhabitants it is the smallest captial of a state in whole Germany but it is famous for its seven lakes and the beautiful castle.

My parents are called *** and ***. My father is 45 years old and owns a doctor's office where he works as general practitioner. My mother is two years younger than my father and she is a church musician, I also have two younger siblings, my brother *** who is 12 years old and my 10-year-old sister ***. Her two rabbits belong to our familiy as well as my budgie Flori. We live in a house with a very nice garden near the city center.

I can get to a lot of important places with my bike easily within ten minutes: my school, my friends, the school of music, the shopping mall, cinema, theatre and even the castle garden, a wonderful place to hang out with friends. In *** we do not have much different choices what we want to do in our free time but it is a good place to grow up in my opinion - not too small but not too big either.

I attend the 10th grade at ***-Gymnasium ***. A 'Gymnasium' is a special type of high school, comparable to the Canadian grammar schools. School has not been a problem for me yet because I can remember a lot of things easily. But I prefer languages and lessons with a social or artistic background like history or music to maths and science. My school is a so called music-Gymnasium with special classes where the musical-artistic education is more important than in 'normal' classes. To be student in that class I have to meet some requirements like singing in a choir and playing an instrument. Those things are added to the regular lessons and take a lot of time but music really is my biggest passion.

I have been playing the piano for seven years now and there is stilll nothing more relaxing than strumming for half an hour if I had an exhausting day. Even longer I have been learning to play the recorder. I am in a duo with a good friend and we have taken part in a competition for young German musicians called 'Jugend musiziert' several times already.

I am also a member of our schools dance theater, ***, as I am an enthusiastical dancer. It fascinates me over and over again how many opportunities we have to express things with the human body. We are like one big family and the rehearsals are so much fun even if we have spend our free weekends on it.

Additionally I love singing. This year I was asked to join the chamber choir which is the best choir at the whole school. That choir is taking part in festivals all over Europe and to me the feeling of singing together is impossible to describe with words. It simply is one of the most beautiful and touching feelings in the world.

As I already wrote music takes a lot of my freetime. Therefore I do not have much time to spend on other interests or sports. Sometimes I am really sad about that because I love reading and writing as well as taking photos or just meeting my friends.

It is very difficult for us to find some time to meet each other because of our many different activities. Lots of my friends I have known for at least five years now and we have done almost everything together from going to the theatre or cinema over school projects to organize barbeques and sleepovers. We have fun together but we can also rely on each other if there is a problem. For my closest friends I would do everything and I am so glad to have them around. Unfortunately there is not much time for sports either but my friends and I discovered longboards for ourselves and meeting spontanoues to skate around has become kind of 'our' thing.

With my family I went skiing and ice-skating for the past 10 years during the winter holidays and one year ago I started snowboarding. In summer we sometimes go on bicycle tours along different German rivers or we go hiking. Swimming is one of my favourite sports no matter who I am with.

My parents and I get along very well. Of course we don not always have the same opinion about a messy room or how long I am allowed to be out but we usually agree on a compromise. Finding time for doing things together is not always easy with five persons whose schedule is very full. But if we do it is always something special and we go on an day trips to the Baltic Sea or visit my grandparents near ***. I really love my family. They give me the strength and support I need to handle my daily life and they are my retreat where I can relax and it does not matter what mood I am in. My parents give me a lot of freedoms and I am so thankful for all the things they made possible e.g. the exchange.

As I already mentioned at the beginning I hope to experience a new culture during those 10 months in Canada. Meeting new people, trying things I have never done before and learning the English language are some of my goals for the exchange. But mainly I decided to go to Canada because I want to learn something from the Canadian mentality for my life.

My open-minded and curios personality has made me interested in many different things already. I hope the exchange will show me even more new ideas of what to do with my life and maybe even what I could study later because I am not sure about it yet.

I hope I could give you an idea of my life and myself. Thank you for reading my letter and giving me the opportunity of realizing my dreams once again!

Best regards,

Hannah