My name is Sasha, I was born in Spain, specifically in Vitoria. So you can locate yourselves, I don’t know if you can locate Bilbao or San Sebastián, well, I live an hour away from both places. I form part of a family of 4 members in which I am the youngest person. I have a sister that is 3 years older than me. I really enjoy spending time with my family. I do not do the same activities with all of them, for example: with my sister I often go to play basketball with her and to see matches. I also share the hobby with my dad, but I do not go with him to play. With my mother I usually watch a series or just go for a walk. I like that from my family, even though we are different we have our enjoyments. We also have a hamster in our house which my father and I take care of.

I am a sociable but shy person, in the sense that I don’t like to be the center of people’s attention at the same time. I usually make friends pretty quickly, for example when I changed basketball teams I didn’t have añy problem in order to talk and get to know new people.I consider myself a generous and detaillist person. Also I am a bit disorganized by nature, I just need to stay focused in not leaving things in a place that is not theirs and returning them to where they belong, if I do that there is not really any problem.

Without any doubt my favorite sport or activity is playing basketball. I play it whenever I can, for example with my friends and I play for a club. I’ve been part of it for two years. I started playing with people of my age, but since we passed to a category where people born in 2009 and 2010 play in the same league, I was changed teams and together with another boy (who played with me the past year) we now play with boys one year older than us. However we are still playing against people born in 2009 and 10. Last year I was selected to play in the Provincial national team championship of the autonomous communities of Euskadi and Navarra. As Vitoria is part of the province of Alava, I played with what are supposed to be the 12 best players born in 2010 and 2011 in my province.

Apart from basketball I play the piano. I’ve been playing the piano for two years but it is an instrument I really like. I don’t follow any method concretely but I alternate playing contemporaneous and classic music. I also used to play the violin. I started playing the violin at a really young age, but I stopped playing it 2 years ago, at the same time I started playing the piano. The main reason I stopped playing it was because I didn’t see any evolution taking into account the effort I made.

As an extracurricular, which I have left this year, I also belonged to a First Lego League team. This is a competition that is held every year, first in phases: Autonomous Community, National and International (The final). The tournament has 2 parts: The project and the robot game. In the project, the organization itself gives you a topic to which society needs to find a solution or simply improve it, for example: last year it was about art. You have to develop an idea that solves or improves the issue and present it in the competition. On the other hand, The Robot Game is about: A robot made of Lego, with a brain and motors, which you program to perform some tests that the tournament gives you in advance, in 2 and a half minutes. For this we spend more or less 5-6 months programming the robot and developing the project, with everything that includes. My team and I have gone to the National competition for 2 years in a row and in the second year we got the pass for an International Open in Morocco, specifically in Marrakech. Thanks to this I have met people from all over the world and made many friends.

Regarding academics, I skipped an academic year concretely the first year of middle school, basically I passed from the last course of elementary school to the second year of middle school. Talking about my adaptation with new people, It was really natural and I didn’t have any problem in order to make new friends.

Speaking about food, I wouldn’t be able to choose only one thing.I’m not the type of person that goes to a restaurant and orders some pasta or pizza. I like to try new food especially when I go on holidays to other countries. I consider food a very important part of the country’s culture. Therefore I consider myself a nice eating person even though I do not like many vegetables, but in order to eat them there is no complaint, I just eat them.

I love going on holidays, I’ve been to lots of places all around Europe in cities such as London, Paris, or Vienna. I’ve traveled once out of Europe to Morocco, specifically Marrakech. I really like traveling to new places but if I had to choose one city it would definitely be Vienna because we have been several times due to my father’s previous job. I got the chance to know it very well and it is an easy to live city with many plans to do.

I also share many traditions in my family such as going to the exact same village all summers. We also go to San Sebastián ,a city an hour away from where I live, to celebrate New Years day. So me and my father while my mom and my sister are putting on their makeup have the tradition of watching an NFL match, it doesn’t really matter which one we just turn the TV on and watch it.

I expect to learn a new lifestyle and culture from this trip. I would like to learn the way that life is there and the differences with the culture of the place I live. I would also know places to visit, make new friends and meet people…Of course i think I will learn english.

Finally, I would like to thank you just for investing this time in reading the letter and for being able to welcome me and everything that that entails. I hope we see each other soon!