Dear Host Family, thank you for taking the time to read my letter. My name is Maggie. You surely get a lot of these letters from Ayusa Intrax, but rest assured, you will not regret reading about my reasons why I want to become an exchange student. I live with my mom, dad, and my 11-year-old sister, with no pets in a village in Zürich, Switzerland. At the moment, I am in the last throes of my middle school exams and I will graduate in July. During the week, I go to a public high school which starts normally at 7.30 am and ends at 4 pm, although I do have twice a week school till 5 pm. Currently, we have many tests so in my spare time I don’t really do much besides studying and sleeping. But if I do have time during the week to do something with my friends, then most of the time we go to the city to the cinema or just for shopping. In my other spare time, I love to act. During the last one and a half years, I was part of a drama club where I learned about acting and self-confidence. In the company, I got the opportunity to be a co-director of a smaller theatre club with younger children. On weekends I go to the local Girl Scouts. It’s technically the same thing as the local Boy Scouts but with less brutality. Since I’m only out at night if I have Girl Scouts and my parents have to get me from these places because they’re most of the time a bit further away, I don’t have an actual curfew. On Saturday if I don’t have Girl Scouts or it’s in the evening, then I try to always go with my parents grocery shopping. I like to do that because we do spend a few hours there, so I get to spend quite some time with them together. If I would have to describe my character then I would describe myself as; Friendly, supportive, open-minded, helpful, enthusiastic, positive attitude, confident, easy to communicate, considerate, calm, and kind. I wanted to do an exchange year because when I didn’t pass the gymnasium exam, I didn’t want to do an apprenticeship because all the good ones were already gone, so I would have only gotten one where I would either work at a bakery and have horrible working hours or work at a grocery store. When I was looking at exchange years, I first thought of going to England, but nothing really awakened my interest, on the other side, America seemed very interesting. For one reason, I always wanted to live in America and not only go there on vacation but also, I wanted to see if it’s really like in the movies because I always found the schools and culture so fascinating since it was so different. I hope that you think I can fit into your family. I am very much looking forward to becoming a part of your family. Yours, Maggie