Dear host family,

My name is Ava. I am 15 years old and together with my parents and brother I live with 45.000 inhabitants in the west of Germany,
near the Dutch border.

I was born in London but moved to Germany when I was two weeks old, because my dad got a job offer. I am currently in 10th grade at my local high school. My school usually starts at 08:00am, therefore I have to wake up at around 06:30am. School finishes at around 1:30pm. If the weather is good, I go by bike and if it`s not I take the bus. My favorite classes are English and History. Besides English I also study French and Italian at school. I also really want to learn Spanish.

After graduating from high school, I want to study law. From what I`ve learned, American law is really interesting and obviously Harvard is famous for its Law School.

In the afternoons, I either do my homework and go to gymnastics practice or I do my homework and catch up with my friends. On Wednesdays my brother and I go to my grandparents’ house after school and eat lunch there. My grandma makes the best German food ever. 

I`ve been doing gymnastics for 12 years now and am really passionate about it. I go to practice four times a week and look up to a lot of American gymnasts like Simone Biles and Katelyn Ohashi. Apart from my own practice, I coach two gymnastics groups every
Wednesday with girls aged four to five and nine to twelve. I have an 11-year-old brother whose name is Elyas. He loves playing soccer. My parents met at university in London, UK and have been married for 18 years. My dad is a really good cook, and he makes amazing food. He is a manager at a big American logistics company and in his free time he does lots of sports like running. My mum works at an international broadcaster and is the deputy head of the Asia-Europe department. In her free time she goes running and does yoga. When she was 17, she also did an exchange year in the USA. She went to Santa Barbara, California and had the best time of her life.

I would also like to find out what it`s like living in the USA and going to a high school there. A lot of movies and TV-shows that I watch take place in America and through social media I have developed a big interest in American culture and the country itself. I think an exchange year is the right thing for me because I am an open-minded person who likes to discover new things and meet new people. I have never been to the United States but last summer we went to Mexico and met two American families from Miami. They were really nice, and it was so much fun spending time with them.

All in all I would really like to spend a year in America and live the American way of life.

Best wishes,

Ava

Interested in hosting—whether 6-8 weeks or the entire school year?