My name is Jasmine; I live in Green Spring, West Virginia. I am seventeen years old and I have a sister named Jessica and a brother named Jeremiah. My parents are Tim  and Kitty . My brother has a neurological disorder and ADHD, so sometimes in my house it can get a little crazy, but you learn to get used to the different tasks that comes with it everyday. I have a boyfriend, his name is Pete Martinez and we have been dating for the last four years. I have lots of cats in my house but only one of them is really mine, her name is Sugar.

I have an obsession with horses I have collected models of them ever since I was younger. I used to have a real horse named Lady Bird but we had to sell her. I love all kinds of shoes I have so many pair I have lost count, I also like purses and shopping I find it all very exciting. I am not much of an outdoors kind of girl, but I do sometimes enjoy going out and having a little fun. I am a member of the Hampshire High School soccer team, although I am not that good I love being on a team because you have all these friends that would do anything for you. I also helped fundraise for the 2005 Italian Exchange trip. I love sweets; I have been known to have a sweet tooth. I do like chicken, potatoes, and pizza. There are a lot of foods I do not like though, my parents say that I am a very “picky eater”. I have to admit that I do not like tomatoes, onions, or pork at all. 

There are many reasons why I want to go to Italy. I mean who would not want to go and travel around a new country and learn about their culture and their way of life. I have never flown on a plane before so that is going to be the scariest of it all. I have never been that far from home before, I have only been around my own state and Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina, which you can see is all right in the area. 

I think the reasons why I want to participate in this program are to meet different people and learn about there lifestyles. I want to see how people interact with each other and see how differently it is in the United States. I want to learn the language of the country and try my best to interact with them to see if I would be able to do it. I want to learn how they greet each other and say goodbye. I am sure the physical setting is much different than it is here and I would love to see the differences in the mountains, the fields, the cities, and any other type of landscape there might be. 

I have always been interested in traveling to another country in my lifetime and doing it at my age would make it even better. I want to interact with people my age and see how they live their lives. I want to learn what the teenagers do to have fun or what they do in their free time and compare and contrast what the teenagers do here in the United States. I think that it would be very interesting to live with a family in another country and live their kind of life and do the things that they do each day. 

I think participating in this program will help me as a person. I believe that it will help me with another language besides English and German. Participating in the program will help me realize all the things in life and how different things can be in different places. Most of all I want it to help me be more open about myself. I am a very shy person until I know the person for a while. 
As a student I think that it will help me understand the real differences between the countries in the world. It will help me realize that there is more out in the world that you can learn if you just take the chance to go out and do it. As a global citizen I can appreciate that people from different countries would take me into their homes and treat me as a part of the family. It would make me realize that there are people out there that no matter their race, gender, or ethnicity are the same as you just having different beliefs.