Opravy

Freiburg, 30.08.2015 Dear Vilde, I just came back from my big cycling trip through Scandinavia a week ago and now I found time to answer you back.

Thanks a lot about your lovely letter and especially the pictures!

As you already know, my name is XXX, I’m 18 years old and I used to live in XXX, Germany with my mother XXX and my brother XXX (1998).

At the moment I’m quite busy because I will move to France in two weeks for studying.

Even if I can leave all my stuff (besides some clothes) at home, there’s a lot to organise.

First, I want to meet some friends that I haven't seen for a while because of the trip and I really want to pass a lot of time with my mom, my brother and my grandmother Irmhild.

I missed the three of them a lot during the trip, and now it feels very weird to move to another country for studying without them.

I’m not afraid of the french language or of living alone, but it’s hard to leave my family.

A couple of days after I came back I finally registered university (I already applied during the trip and became a positive answer).

But the registration is at the german university that will send me to france, so i still have to wait for there answer before I can register in france even though the studies already start in two weeks.

This is why I am quite a little bit nervous at the moment.

Besides that, I’m applying for a scholarship grant and I need to write a CV and prepare a presentation.

It’s a lot harder to write that sort of CV for the scholarship than for another job, because you have to describe your whole live in maximum three pages and decide what is important and what not.

Due to the fact that there are many applicants, you have to write in a individual style to be eye-catching and you have to be very honest about the inner feelings you experienced during the different periods of your life.

Further you need to prepare a 10 minutes presentation about no matter what theme.

I took me a lot time to decide what I really want to present because I do not only need to be a kind of nerd in that theme, but it also needs to be interesting for the other one’s because there will be a 20 minutes discussion after the presentation.

Now I tooked sustainability as a theme and I want to discuss whether sustainability should be a subject at school (like maths or biology) or not.

I think that could be good, because I’m really interested in environmental themes and I do believe that it is very important to act in a more sustainable way.

In order to my hobbies there a three big interests to mention: the KSJ, language exchange meetings and sports.

The KSJ is a youth organisation, a bit like the scouts, I am in since a couple of years.

We organise many cool trips for young people, like holiday camps or weekends.

Even if I am now studying in France, I want to come back for our meetings (my studying city is only 250 kilometers away from my home) and weekend trips because I really like the people who work voluntarily with me and I think it’s very important for the development of children to take part in events like our holiday camps where they can learn a lot about values while playing.

Language exchange meeting sounds a little bit boring, but is somehow the best thing you can do.

These are meetings (mostly in cafe bars) between people from all over the world (mostly students) that talk in many different languages to each other.

There’s for example a spanish meeting in what people from Spain, Latin America and from other nations participate and it’s really fun to meet new people while learning another language.

This is something I did for about two years, in the beginning just to prepare my final exams at high school but after a couple of weeks because it was real fun.

I think I can continue this in France as well where I will even need it to improve my french for being able to study in that language but also because I dont want to forget my spanish and because I really want to improve my English.

And then the last hobby: sport.

During my final exams I nearly did not do any sport (only cycling about 20 kilometers a week to meet my friends and go to other meetings), because there was so much to do at school, but then during the two month trip through Scandinavia I cycled a lot and now I really want to continue doing sport.

I know that jogging or any sport you do alone without a trainer is no good idea for me because then I always find a reason not to train out so in France I will register in a sports club.

Especially martial arts (like judo or other fighting activities) would be great because you always have someone to train with and this is what I need :) Hope it was interesting for you to read a little bit about my life and I hope to read your answer soon.

I guess the school holidays are over now and you can tell me a lot about high school and how you feel in this new period of live :) Even if I won’t live in Germany anymore, you can answer me to this address and my mum will give me the letter then.