Dear host family,

I am so excited to start this journey with you and am thrilled to meet you someday finally. I cannot thank you enough for considering letting me into your family.

My name is Marlene, and I am living with my little sister and my mother. I am currently 15 years old but I will be 16 when I come to you. My parents are divorced, and I sometimes visit my father or go on vacation with him. Part of our family are also a pet cat and a bearded dragon. This is part of the reason why I help caring for the animals in our local animal shelter on the weekends. If I am not cuddling my cat, I like to paint, crochet, sew or read. While I am doing some sort of craft, I like listening to music, especially to Taylor Swift. Me and my friends like to meet up for activities like climbing, camping, stand-up- paddling, biking, or going to the cinema. We have a beautiful park with lakes for the ducks and geese, it is a perfect place to hang out or have picnics.

I have been wanting to take part in an exchange year for quite some time, but I never had the courage to initiate anything until one day where I was at a friend’s house and we were talking about an exchange year. She was not sure if it was something she wanted to do, but her mother
told us about her exchange student experience, and it sounded so great that it finally convinced because I did not want to miss out on an opportunity to experience it myself.

The different culture is one of my main reasons for my exchange year. It is also why I chose the USA as my destination. I wanted to be in an English-speaking country. The UK was too close to Germany, Australia too far and Canada was too European. The USA is so different from my home country and even though you get a glimpse of the life of an American through TV shows and the media, you never know what is true and what is false until you have been there yourself. I want to get to know a new culture and way of life. I believe that living with a host family is an authentic and enriching journey that goes beyond what I can learn in a classroom setting. I am keen on learning your family traditions, language and daily life and to share my
own culture with you as well. I am confident that this adventure will expand my horizon and I am enthusiastic to gain more independence by navigating new challenges.

Thank you for considering me as a family member. This is an important chapter of my life, and

I cannot wait to share it with you and to make long lasting memories.

Warm regards,
Marlene