Hi,
Can you help me check through this letter? It is an assignment from school- write a letter to a friend. Is my tone appropriate? Please tell me if my tone is not semi-formal and friendly in any part of the letter.
Thank you so much for helping me!
5 November 2008
Dear Sarah
How has your holiday been so far? Mine has been going great! Now that I am back in Vietnam, I am enjoying every minute of it. Nothing feels like home, you know.
Now I am in my hometown, forty kilometres away from Hanoi. Do you remember Leila, my cousin, who used to stay with my family during her time in college a few years back? She is getting married tomorrow, can you believe it? Time passes so fast! That is why I came back to my hometown; I am excited to help her arrange everything.
Leila's home, where I am staying now, is on a farmland. It is very much different from my home in Hanoi, where you visited last year. The countryside is so much more peaceful; cars and their annoying horns are rarely seen. There are a lot of wide spaces for teenagers to hang out, unlike in the city; I even got to fly a kite! It was so much fun.
In the last few days, I mainly accompanied Leila in her shopping trips to prepare for the wedding. She was ecstatic. There was not much shopping left to do, since her careful mother and mother-in-law had been preparing for this occasion for months; but I did get to see Leila's wedding dress and her traditional "ao dai". I enclosed a picture of me and Leila in her "ao dai" in this letter. She looks so lovely, don't you think?
Tomorrow is the big day, and all of us are going to be very busy. Everybody, except for Leila, has to get up at cock-crow to prepare some traditional food for the wedding. I am going to hit the kitchen too. I don't know how to cook, but I will try to learn something simple; and hopefully I will not break anything. In the afternoon, I will help Leila get dressed and make up, before she goes out and greets her family and relatives who come and visit her house. The party takes place in the evening, at a local hotel. I promised Leila that I would help in the reception, so I guess I will wear my traditional "ao dai" like her, too. The wedding is going to be really memorable.
I will be leaving for my home the day after tomorrow, and I will fly back to Singapore next week. I will bring you some Vietnamese food and the pictures of the wedding. Can't wait to see you!
Take care and enjoy your holiday.
Love,
Good morning.
Your tone is appropriately friendly; you are warm enough to let her know you still feel close enough to her and descriptive enough to not assume she knows all the details (since it seems you haven't seen each other in awhile).
A couple of things:
There is no need to put ao dai in quotation marks, so remove them.
Anytime you are talking about yourself and others, just as if you were to be introducing someone, always put yourself last. "...a picture of me and Leila..." should be "...a picture of Leila and me...".
"...I will help Leila get dressed and put on her makeup , before..."
Nice work!
Regards,
Gloria
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