STUDENT’S LETTER Dear host family, Hello, I’m Aurora! First of all I want to thank you for hosting me for these five months, I’m very grateful for that. I know that this it’s a great opportunity, and I want to share it with you, and learn a lot about you. What are your passions? What do you do in your free time? I really hope that we’ll create a lot of good memories and experiences together. I’m from Italy. I live in a small town, where everyone knows each other! Sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it’s not, but I really like the atmosphere here. I do not have a big family: I live with my mum only, because my parents are separated (but I see my dad very often during the week), and I’m an only child, even if I would’ve liked having a brother or a sister. I have a strong relationship with my family, and I hope I will create one with you too. My biggest passions are sport, reading and writing. I consider myself a diligent student: I really appreciate going to school and always learning new things; knowing a lot of things makes me feel good! I know that reading it’s not a wide spread passion for kids my age, but my mom gave me this passion, and now I probably couldn’t live without books! When I was younger, my parents used to say that I was a bookworm, and I guess they were right! I enjoy writing as well, in fact my life-long dream is to become a journalist. I want to attend university in the future, to try to reach the job of my dream; I know it’ll be hard, but I hope that this experience will also help me in this long journey. I really love travelling, and I did a lot of trips with my parents, for example in France and in Greece; do you like it as well? As I said, I also appreciate sport in general (maybe not running and going for long walks), but I think that doing sport is a great way to spend time. I’m a dancer, I do modern and acrobatic dance (which is a mix of modern dance and acrobatic gymnastic), and I really put my heart into it. Dancing makes me feel good, and with it I can express what I’m feeling in the best way possible. My dad instead gave me a passion for soccer and Formula 1, sports that are considered masculine, but I don’t agree with the people who say this. For me, every sport is for everyone; people are always very surprised when I say that I watch Formula 1. Here in Italy, we have like “a cult” for soccer, it’s without a doubt the most appreciated sport. What is the most popular sport where you live? I also like cooking, in particular typical dishes of my country, and if you agree, I would like to cook something typical for you. I love animals, but snakes, I can’t really stand them, and at my dad’s house I have two dogs, but unfortunately, I’m allergic to their fur, so they have to live outside. I’m a very open-minded person, even though I’m a bit introverted when I first meet someone, and I’m ready to discover a lot of new places and new things and make a lot of new experiences with you. I don’t have a lot of friends, but the ones I have are very important to me, and I can always count on them. They describe me as friendly and generous, and I really love spending time with them. We like going to the cinema or going out for dinner, or maybe just spending time at the house of someone chatting. In the end, in the US I would like to grow as a person, meet new people and try new things. I’m really interested in American culture, it’s very different from Italian culture, and I hope that I’ll learn even more about it. One thing that I’ve always dreamed of doing is cheerleading: in Italy we don’t have this sport, and it really fascinates me, so I’d like to try it, but I don’t know if it’ll be possible. I want to thank you again for your hospitality, and I really hope that we’ll get along together. Thank you for reading my letter, I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Yours faithfully, Aurora.