Dear host family!

I have no idea how to start so I will just start by describing my family. My family consists of my mom, dad and my two brothers. We have no pets. My mom is called Andrea she is 53 years old, and she is an event manager. My mom is a loving person who loves to do yoga, going for walks with my dad and her friends and watching movies. She is also a hard-working person. I love baking cakes with her or banana bread or her favourite Bundt cake that’s delicious. My dad is my idol. His name is Ilja (like me), and he is an architect. He is very smart, he is a hard-working person too and he is very supportive when it comes to school, sports or just things that he knows are good for us. My dad is funny but serious at the same time. He is the best cook I know, and I love when he makes curry, it’s like my favourite food he makes.

Now we get to my brothers: Oliver and Viktor. Let’s start with my younger brother Viktor. He is 12 and he loves to play on his computer, it’s almost like he’s addicted to it (he is). He also likes to ski and is in a skiing team. He’s lazy and kind of annoying but he can be funny, and I enjoy playing games with him. My older brother is called Oliver and he is 20 years old and he’s an interesting person. He always has something to do or when he has nothing to do, he makes plans to go somewhere with his friends. He used to ski for almost 6 or 7 years but now he doesn’t do any sport, he just goes to the gym. Oliver has a good taste in music and knows how to dress so my style mostly consists of clothes he gave me or recommended me. This year he started going to college to study production. 3 years ago, he was in USA too, for a semester even though he was supposed to be there for a year, but that needed to change because of covid.

The fifth member of our family is me. My name is Ilja and I’m currently 16 years old. I´m an introvert but my parents sometimes joke that I’m an ixtrovert (they made up that word) because they say that I can be an extrovert, I just need to get comfortable around people. So basically, I’m something in between, I guess. I’m calm and quite. My strengths are sports, I’m handy, I’m attentive, I can understand how a person feels and can read the room. My weaknesses are that the way I start the day sometimes affects my whole day and how I behave, I’m not a morning person either.

I have a lot of hobbies like playing football or other sports, playing video games, watching movies or Netflix and hanging out with my friends. I used to ski professionally for almost 12 years, and I loved it. Skiing is my favourite sport and every spring holidays we go to Alps to ski for a week with my family and friends. It’s my favourite holiday because we always have so much fun. But I stopped skiing actively, because if I continued, I would have to take it very seriously, as I would be in an age category where I would race 30 times during the racing season from mid-January until end of March, and I would have to be almost 150 days on skis during the whole year and that would cost me a lot of money and time. So I stopped and now I do athletics, mostly running and long-distance jumping. I´m also thinking about joining a football (soccer) team because my friends are playing in it, and I’m pretty good at football and they say that I should join. Now let’s get to food. Asian food is my favourite type of food. I also like waffles.

The main reason i want go to USA is probably that I was inspired by my older brother. As i mentioned earlier he also went to USA for 6 months 3 years ago. He says that its the best thing he experienced and he had a lot of fun. I also want to go because i want to learn new things and have fun living with you obviosuly. I hope we will experience many nice and unforgettable moments togehter.

And lastly, I would like to thank for this amazing opportunity you are giving me.

With regards, Ilja