Hi, it's nice to meet you. Write to us!

We're the seventh grade English class at Lenape Middle School in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA. One of our classmates (Laura, who will post notes here as she travels) is going to Australia and Southeast Asia for 6 weeks in February and March 2009. (She's the blond girl fifth from the left in the back row) She's handing out cards with our class picture, our snail mail and email addresses, and a little bit about us. If you don't see Laura or get a card, write to us by posting comments on this blog, or send us a letter care of our teacher. We'll try to write back quickly:

Mrs. Helstrom

Lenape Middle School

313 West State Street

Doylestown, PA 18901

USA

Here's what you might like to know about us:

We live in a small town about 15 miles north of Philadelphia on the east coast of the United States. Unlike many people in America, we can walk to lots of things in our town: bookstores, the library, our public pool, creeks for fishing, coffee shops, museums. Our town is safe and has friendly people - we often see people we know around town. The center of town is crowded with houses and buildings, but we can drive five minutes and be in the countryside. The first Friday of every month in Doylestown, stores and museums stay open late and we crowd into town to see everybody and have fun.

Everybody in our class is 12 or 13 years old. We're interested in pretty typical activities for people our age in our country: music - many of us play instruments or listen to our iPod; sports like football, basketball, baseball, lacrosse and cheerleading; hobbies like reading, watching TV, watching Youtube, and texting on our cellphones. We go to school five days a week for seven hours each day, with about a half-hour for lunchtime. Each class lasts about 43 minutes. English is the first language for most of us, but many of us will take classes in languages like spanish, french, german or chinese. We have Saturday and Sunday off, though lots of us play team sports on the weekend. We have about 10 weeks off from school in the summer: June, July and August. 

Many of us haven't had the chance to travel, so we're curious to find out more about students in other countries:

- what do you do with spare time?

- What kind of food do you like?

- what does your computer keyboard look like?

- what have you heard about American teenagers?

- what is your school day like?

- when do you have school holidays?

- what chores do you have?

- what kind of music do you listen to? 

- what sports do you like, watch or play?

- what books do you read?

- what's the big news in your country right now?

- what interesting customs do you have? For instance, in our part of the country, we might say, "Yo" to get someone's attention.

We hope to hear from you!