Teacher Thomas had worked in our school for one semester. He visited us so that he could tell us about his adventures in America. He had been in the USA the week before and told us about where he went and what he had seen. He told us about the way of life in the USA and about things in general. He showed us a picture of New York during the day, and again at night. He told us that Americans tend to eat a lot of fast food which is very unhealthy. He said that they also tend to overeat. The houses in America are quite far from each other, and the markets, restaurants and shopping centers are also far from them. Thomas said that when some families are hungry, they simply get into their car, drive to a fast food restaurant, eat and then go home. This is quite typical and because of it, many Americans are overweight. They generally have an unhealthy diet. Children in America are often very active in sport clubs.

However, this is a big responsibility for their parents. For example, if a family has two children who are in different sports they often have practice a few times a week. America doesn't have a well networked public transit system so the parents have to drive their children to all their practices and this can be very far away. People drive a lot and they often drive long distances, but gas is much cheaper than in Europe. Clothing also costs much less. A T-shirt cost about 3 euros, while in Croatia it costs about 100 kn or more. Running shoes (trainers) cost about 500-700 kn in Croatia or about 100 euros, while in the USA they cost about 60 euros.

The Americans don't pay for medical insurance. However, they must pay each time they visit their doctor, dentist, or other medical practicioner. That isn't good because only the rich have enough money to pay for regular dentist or doctor check-ups, not to mention operations, medication and hospital stays. When the poor get sick, they simply don't have the money to pay for help and so they simply don't get treated.

There are a lot of immigrants in America, and so each nationality living there has his own district. Americans are very bad in Geography. They are not really tied to Europe at all and they know very little about it. If we told an American that we were from Croatia, they probably wouldn't know where it was and wouldn't be able to show it on a map.
Katarina Leko, 8A
 

In Geography class



A discussion about America


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