About me

Hey ihr Lieben :)

Ich heiße Annika, bin im Moment 15 Jahre alt und mein großer Traum ist es meine 11. Klasse im Ausland zu verbringen. Dazu habe ich mich bei YFU beworben. Mittlerweile bin ich meinem Ziel schon etwas näher gekommen, denn ich hab eine Zusage für MEXIKO bekommen.
Hier möchte ich über alle meine Erfahrungen, Erlebnisse und was es sonst noch Spannendes zu erzählen gibt berichten.

Für meine Bewerbung musste ich auch einen Gastfamilienbrief schreiben und ich dachte, das wäre vielleicht eine gute Idee um mich einfach mal vorzustellen :) Viel Spaß beim Lesen:

Dear Host Family,

First of all, I would like to thank you for reading my letter and spending time on getting to know me better. I’m really happy to get the opportunity to spend one year in Mexico. I hope this letter will give you an impression about me and my life here in Germany.

My name is Annika and I’ll be 16 on August 4th, next year. My friends would describe me as open- minded, friendly, helpful, musical and athletic. I live in the south of Germany. Here, I live with my family in a little house in a village with about 4000 inhabitants. My family consists of four members: My mum Anja, my dad Maik and my little brother Philipp who is 12 years old at the moment. My mum is a kindergarten teacher. I really enjoy visiting her during my days off of school, because I love to play and take care of children. That's why I sometimes go babysitting too. My dad is working as an electrician for a company.                                
The relationship my family has is very good. We do things together every weekend. For example we attend biking tours or go swimming. My family is a very important part of my life because they always support me when I need help or I worry about something. I'm really thankful that they have saved so much money for me to make this exchange possible!

At the moment, I'm a student in grade 10 at a secondary school, which my brother is attending too. Although it's close to where I live, I have to ride a bus every morning to get there. School begins quite early in Germany, therefore, I have to wake up at 6 o'clock, which is sometimes really hard. My favourite subjects are Music, PE and Art. At the moment, I'm learning Spanish, English and Latin as foreign languages at school. I'm not the best in these classes, but that's just another reason why I would like to participate on this exchange. As for extra-curricular activities, I am a member of our school orchestra and I love to participate at the concert at the end of the year. We play a lot of famous songs like “Lord of the rings”. This year, I also decided to help younger students in Math courses, as this is my best subject. I don’t find Math very difficult, and I have fun helping people to understand it too.

After school, I do my homework. Of course, I also help with the household chores by cleaning the kitchen and bathroom and tiding up my room. As well, I enjoy cooking with my mum. She shows me a lot of recipes. We cook dinner and bake together often. As school ends at 12.30 a.m., I have a lot of free time everyday. Therefore, I meet my friends to go eat ice cream, shop or just talk and laugh. We always have fun and have a great time together. One time per week we have dance lessons. There, we learn new variations of dancing steps. Sometimes we also visit little dancing balls on the weekend. I really like it because you can meet a lot of new people there and it's also a lot of fun. Every Friday I play in the orchestra in our village. There we participate for many appearances like a winter concert. I love to go swimming in summer, so I spend a lot of time at the Lake of Constance (a big lake near our village). In Winter I often go skiing with the skiing club I'm a member of. We train for taking part in skiing races.

I've never been to Mexico before. This exchange has been my biggest dream of mine for such a long time and I'm really happy that it is going to come true. My motivation about leaving my family and friends to go for one year abroad is to collect new life experience. I want to improve my Spanish, because I think it's a really amazing language and so many people of the world can speak it. Another reason, is to explore a new culture and to find new friends and a second family. I also hope to become more confident and independent. I'm really excited about this exchange and I would be very pleased to be able to be a part of your family and I could maybe even show you the german way of life too. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours Truly,
Annika