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By – Annabelle Hoogakker and Willemijn Vos, The Netherlands

We are going to tell you something about a specific American thing: fast food. Fast food is globally really famous but specially in America. We think that fast food a big reason is for obese. It began with the first fish and chip shops in Britain in the 1860s. Drive-through restaurants were first popularized in the 1950s in the United States. You have a lot of reasons why people buy fast food. For example, it is cheap, you don’t have to make something buy yourself, you don’t have dishes afterwards, it is ready really fast, and you can pick it up after work. We think fast food will work as an addicting. When you ate it for one time and you like it, you will take it more and more times because it is easy. That’s the reason that a lot of American people have too much weight.

McDonald’s is one of the biggest fast food restaurants globally; daily they serve approximately 68 million customers in 119 countries across 36,615 restaurants around the world. McDonald’s was established on May 15th 1940, in San Bernardino, California by Richard and Maurice McDonald’s. The restaurants serve hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken product’s, French fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes and desserts, but they added salads, wraps, smoothies and fruits to the menu. There is a lot of criticism against the McDonalds. Large cities like Chicago and New York are accusing the McDonald’s menu of being a threat to American health, and they blame McDonald’s for persuading people to eat more fast food, especially children. With their happy meal, play grounds and commercials they tempt children to buy fast food for a toy or to come and play. McDonald’s response to the criticism is that it is the people’s own responsibility to stay healthy. The people choose to eat fast food and they know it is unhealthy.

We interviewed two people from the EF school about fast food. We asked them the same questions. Their answers were surprisingly really similar. Both didn’t like fast food that much, but if they had to go to a fast food restaurant they would choose The Habit. They both thought that fast food restaurants cause obese because it is easier, quicker, and cheaper and you don’t have to cook yourself.

 

 

‘I study. I learn. I like discussing with people. In all countries where I go, I meet new people.’ This Prince quotation is like me. Thanks to EF, I have met new people. First, I have met my host family. They are adorable with me, interesting and they behave like a family, like I’m part of their family. Then I have met new students, new friends from different countries all around the world. I have learned about many cultures and I have a more open mind.

Do you know this quotation: ‘Staying where you are, is existing, traveling is living’? I love traveling around the world, discovering new countries, new cultures, learning new languages… I have the feeling that is important to change our habits, to live to discover the world and explore what we are interested in. I enjoy seeing new landscapes. I want to make more memories to remind me when I am old, and then I could tell stories to my grandchildren.

 

  Laurie RUYET, France

by Sonja Kappler, Germany

The Golden City is a place everyone has to visit once.

I went to San Francisco at the beginning of my US trip. I am very thankful that a friend of mine, which I knew 10 minutes at that time, asked me if I want to travel with her and 3 other girls to San Francisco. I was really impressed by the beautiful, diverse and alive city. That weekend also showed me that it was the right thing to escape from my life at home and to try out something new. It was a great experience to see all the popular places and to meet such great people.

 

“Family is the most important thing in the world.” – Princess Diana

I am thankful for my family. Without my parents I couldn’t do things like spending 4 month abroad in another country. They support me in everything and since I am away from them I realise how important family is and that we should not take our parents and siblings for granted. I am already looking forward to eat a healthy meal cooked by my mother, to listen to stupid jokes made by my das and to fight about something stupid with my sister. To have a family and people that love you in your life is the greatest gift you can get.

thanksgiving

By Willemijn Vos, The Netherlands

As you can see in this graphic the amount of accidents are decreasing. 1972 was the record year of most aircraft crashes. According to the National Safety Council, the odds of dying in an aircraft accident in the U.S. are about 1 in 7,178, while the odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 98.

Cause of an air crash

There are 5 most common reasons for an air crash. The first one is the pilot error. 50% of all plane crashes are caused by pilot errors. That may seem like a very high percentage, but it makes perfect sense when a person thinks about everything that a pilot must do. Pilots have to navigate through dangerous weather, respond to mechanical issues and execute a safe takeoff and landing. Some plane accidents are caused when pilots misread equipment, misjudge weather conditions or fail to recognize mechanical errors until it’s too late.

Secondly another cause is the mechanical error. The second most common cause of plane crashes is mechanical error, which accounts for about 22% of all aviation accidents. Mechanical error differs from pilot error, because, when a critical system fails, the pilot may be at the mercy of the plane. Some mechanical errors occur because of a flaw in the plane’s design amd other failures occur when outside circumstances damage the plane. The causes of these failures can be pretty bizarre.

The third one is the weather. Around 12% of all plane crashes are caused by weather conditions. Although flights are often grounded when weather conditions are deemed hazardous, storms, heavy winds and even fog can sneak up on pilots and air traffic controllers. Lightning strikes can be especially dangerous. When lightning hits a plane, it can disable it in many ways, but even milder weather conditions can cause plane crashes

Fourthly is sabotage. Plane crashes that are caused by sabotage draw the most media attention, but they only account for about 9% of total plane crashes. Some sabotaged flights crash because of hijackers, but, despite increasingly strict TSA regulations, some passengers still manage to smuggle bombs or firearms onto planes. When they’re successful, a single passenger can bring down a jet, killing hundreds of people. Although terrorists, extremists or militia groups are usually responsible for attacks like these, this is not always the case. Mentally ill passengers have been known to attack both pilots and passengers, and some have even detonated bombs in an attempt to commit suicide while in flight.

The fifth one is other human error. The bulk of the remaining plane crashes, about 7%, are caused by other kinds of human errors. Some plane crashes are inadvertently caused by air traffic controllers. Air traffic control mistakes have caused planes to crash into mountains, to land on occupied runways and even to collide in midair. When a plane is loaded, fueled or maintained incorrectly, that’s human error, too. One of the more common fatal mistakes caused by humans is something called “fuel starvation” – but this isn’t always the result of an improperly filled fuel tank.

Aircraft crash examples

In 2009 there was an air crash on the Hudson River with 155 people on board. During takeoff there was a bird strike. The pilot had to land the plane on the Hudson River. Everybody survived and only 15 people needed treatment in the hospital.

On 24 June 1982, a Boeing 747 from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia crashed. The reason for the crash was that the smoke of the volcano caused all four engines to stop working. The first sign of trouble came as the plane, which had hit cruising height, headed past Java over the south-eastern Indian Ocean.

Captain Moody, who had left the cockpit for a stroll, was summoned back to the flight deck. As he climbed the stairs of the jumbo jet, he noticed puffs of “smoke” billowing from the vents in the floor and detected an acrid smell.

 

I think through all these years the security and planes have improved, and there are still new ideas about how we can do it better. I think it will change over the years in a positive way. I am happy to see that the amount of aircraft accidents is decreasing. It is almost impossible to have no aircraft accidents, because everything is controlled by human, and humans can make mistakes. There are factors like the weather that are uncontrollable, but engineers are searching for solutions, for example the solution of flying without a pilot, everything will be done by automatic pilot. We will see what will happen in a couple of years.

 

 

 

by Sonja Kappler, Germany

We come in contact with all sorts of media every day in our lives. Watching TV is still the most favorite leisure activity and especially young people spend several hours a day on the Internet. When we travel to work by car we usually listen to the radio, which is also a form of media, and with our smartphones we can be connected to the Internet whenever we want to be. So we can quickly see that we are in contact with the media nearly the whole day. It is very important that we take a closer look at how the media affects ,and especially influences, us.

Media can also be seen as the fourth estate in a democratic state. Media in this case should inform the people, should criticize the politicians, should cause people to think more and to form an opinion. The media can also influence political actions. The quotation of Bob Woodward (American investigative journalist and non-fiction author), “The central dilemma in journalism is that you don’t know what you don’t know.”, shows that the journalists decide what is seen as important and about what the people get informed and what about not. As a result we can say that people only know what the media wants them to know.

With the way a journalist also writes about something or someone can influence us, for example if they just talk about the negative aspects of a person or a topic, the public will usually also have a negative connection about the person or the topic. It is possible for the media to ruin a person or to promote them to be represented as the greatest person. The quotation from Malcom X  “The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” also supports that.

Sometimes the media also focusses on information about celebrities, especially tabloids report about what is new and in in Hollywood. Because of that the really important news doesn’t get enough attention.

If we talk about media we should also include Social Media. With platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, people can be online the whole day. With Social Media we can easily stay connected with people all around the world and people can also share and discuss topics online. Another positive aspect is that people can find other people who have the same interests as each other. On the other hand a lot of wrong information is spread on the Internet and people don’t interact face to face anymore. Chat messages are often misinterpreted. Also people forget their real lives or take on other personalities. The media has also the power to find out everything about a person because what was once shared on the Internet is never gone.

 

 

By Jessica Fruehbrodt, Germany

 I’ve travelled a lot around the world and gotten to know many beautiful places in the world, but the place I’m interested in most has always been the USA. For the last six years I’ve spent a lot of time in Florida. I was there almost three months per year, but this summer I decided to visit another state in the United States of America. I wanted to get to visit the beautiful cities, landscapes and people in California. The place where nothing seems to be impossible, people enjoy their lives and take it easy. So I started to plan my big trip in December 2015. First, I created the route which my boyfriend and I were going to take. After that I booked all the hotels, flights and rental cars. I had just graduated from school so I had a lot of free time this summer and this would be the beginning of my gap year.

 On July 10, 2016 I flew from Munich, Germany to Sarasota, Florida. I was really excited because I hadn’t seen my best friend for six months and I was going to meet her in Florida to celebrate her birthday in Miami Beach. She lives in Santa Barbara und works there as a nanny. After I picked her up from the airport we drove down the Interstate 75 South, parallel to the west coast. It was a five hour drive but we enjoyed the ride. We had a lot to talk about so the time went by fast. Her birthday was amazing because we had so much fun that night on Ocean Drive. The next day we went to Key West – the southernmost point of the United States of America. I love the road we took to get there because it seemed like we were driving above the water. We had to pass a lot of islands to reach the southernmost island – Key West. And when we finally got there it seemed like we were in the Caribbean because the color of the sea and the beaches are so different to the rest of Florida. We spent the rest of the week in Sarasota. It is a beautiful little city on the west coast between Tampa and Fort Myers. Siesta Key is one of the closest beaches there and it has been voted to the nation’s best beach because it has sugary white sand which is 99% pure quartz crystal.

 On July 20, 2016, I flew from Orlando, Florida to Los Angeles, California together with my best friend. She had to go back to work again so I met up with my boyfriend at the airport. My plan worked out perfectly because he arrived only 10 minutes after me. We picked up our rental car and spent our first night in Los Angeles. The next morning we went to Santa Barbara. I was so excited to see where I was going to live for the next six months. I fell in love with Santa Barbara the first time I went there. The Spanish architecture and the fact that the sea, the beach and the mountains are so close together make it look so beautiful.

Our next stop was Las Vegas, Nevada. This city is so unbelievably amazing. There is so much to do: a lot of different shows, gambling, music events, etc. Everything seemed so unreal, almost like a plastic world.  We spent the weekend there and on Saturday we went to the Grand Canyon. The changing colors of the canyons during sunset are breathtaking.

After this stunning weekend, we drove northwards and through the Death Valley. We stayed the night in a little town called Beatty which is miles away from civilization. We were at the lowest land surface in the western hemisphere which is called Badwater Basin and also visited a ghost town in the desert. These unforgettable impressions made me think about the good life we’re living compared to people who live in the desert. They have to struggle with their daily lives like where to get enough water to drink and how to survive the heat. I’ve never been to a place with such extreme temperatures. The thermometer was pointing to 127^o F.

Our next stop was the Yosemite National Park. It took us a long time to get from the entrance of the park down into the valley, but it was worth it. The nature is so beautiful: We saw the famous mountain, called El Capitan. The forest and the waterfalls were breathtaking and we also saw a lot of different wildlife, deer and bears. We stayed that night in Mammoth Lakes, which is a little town at the foot of the mountain. It is very popular for skiing and snowboarding in winter time. At the next day we went to Mono Lake, which is popular for it’s high level of salt.

We also drove to Sacramento that day, the capital city of California. I went to the city’s government office and we could see there how the offices changed during the time. On the next day we finally arrived in another big city – San Francisco. I was really excited to visit all the famous places and Lombard Street was my most favorite place there. This street is known as the steepest road in the city with eight hairpin turns in between there are the beautiful flowers. I also was really fascinated by the fog – it appeared so quickly! Since I became interested in visiting places because of personal reasons I dreamed of visiting the probably most famous prison ever and I was really disappointed when I realized that tickets to visit Alcatraz are sold out months in advance! So we went on a boat tour instead and gained a lot of information about the city itself, its popular places, and also got really close to the island, where Alcatraz is located.

 On the next day we drove southwards again and made a quick stop at Hearst Castle to have a look at his beautiful home he built for himself. That is definitely one of the most fascinating places I’ve ever seen because of its history. It is incredible that one person could build a mansion like that and also has the money to afford it. William Randolph Hearst and his architect Julia Morgan started to create this incredible castle in 1919 and stopped in 1947 when he got sick. On his deathbed he said that he only finished half of what he planned to build. After this beautiful day which was full of new impressions and ideas we drove back to Santa Barbara and spent another night there.

After another awesome weekend in Los Angeles we spent the following night in Borrego Springs, which is a really small town in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. There was really nothing to do, but I still enjoyed a relaxed time in the nature and it seemed like I needed a time out because we visited so many cities. It was extremely interesting for me to see all the different types of nature California has to offer. Our last stop in the Golden State was San Diego. It is the closed city right in front of the Mexican border and this is the reason why it has a lot of Mexican influence. We spent our last few days visiting Old Town, La Jolla and the largest zoo of the whole state.

After almost 5000 miles (~ 8000 km) in 15 days, we went back to Florida. My boyfriend and I met up with my mum at the airport of Orlando and spent another few days in Sarasota.

When my boyfriend went back to Germany and my mom and I went to Miami to go on a cruise ship. We spent the first day on the ship cruising towards Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. I was really excited to see how the nature on the Bahamas is compared the Caribbean islands. And when we finally got to the first island I saw the difference. In the Caribbean the beaches are full of palm trees, which I personally prefer, but the sand of the Bahamas is more white and clean – just because there are no plants or trees. I can’t have both, I know, but Half Moon Cay was really amazing. I got to know how it would feel when people are marooned on an island all by themselves, because there were only 21 people living on it.

Our next stop was the capital city of the Bahamas – Nassau. It pours on the same charm like the Caribbean islands do. We enjoyed our mother-daughter time sitting at a beach bar and sipping fresh coconuts. After our arrival in Miami we headed up to the south and I showed my mom the same locations like I already had done for my best friend a few weeks before. I took her to the southernmost point of the United States of America – Key West.

We also spent another day in the Everglades of Florida. We fed the alligators and I wrestled with a python. That was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve ever had. We stayed that night in Miami Beach and on the next day we drove back to Sarasota and spent the rest of our holidays there visiting the cities nearby.

 To summarize, it was an awesome summer I spent in the USA and I saw so many interesting places and cities, overwhelming and different kinds of nature and I’m so glad, that I was allowed to spend such a wonderful time of my life with my loved ones. I’m looking forward to seeing the whole world and I’m already excited for my next trip to take place. Wish me luck and I’ll let you know about it!

 

Once upon a time, people played hockey with a horn of a bull. The ball didn’t touch the ground and there were no goals. Field hockey as we know it now was started after the Middle Ages. The first names of hockey were like: Hurling, Kappan and Shinty. Only people from United Kingdom were playing the game at that time.

The rules of the games were really different at that time. The ball was not allowed to touch the ground and you had to try to get the ball in the goal of the other team.  A hundred years later, they played it on a hard sport-ground. Since that moment, the ball is allowed to touch the ground. The hockey sticks were longer and rounder at the end. In the summer period of the year, they played hockey on a ground of grass. In the years after that, hockey became very popular in The Netherlands. They had their own rules. The hockey stick was flat at both sides and the ball was bigger and orange.

Now, I would like to tell you something about the rules of field hockey. The rules are the same internationally. The game is played between two teams of eleven players. There is an unlimited amount of times a team can sub in and out. You can’t sub a player in and out during a penalty corner.  The flat side of the hockey stick is always on the natural side for a right-handend person swinging the stick at the ball from right to left. It is not allowed to touch the ball with the other side of the stick. The goal of hockey is to get the ball in the goal of the other team. When you are in the circle in front of the goal, you can take a shot.

When the ball is not touched in the circle in front of the goal, there is no goal.
When you touch the ball with your feet, the ball is for the other team. When this happens in the circle in front of the goal, it will be a penalty  The players of a hockey game are a goalkeeper who wears a different color shirt and full protective equipment comprising at least headgear, leg guards and kickers; this player is referred to in the rules as a goalkeeper; or a field player  wearing a different color shirt and who may wear protective headgear (but not leg guards and kickers or other goalkeeping protective equipment) when inside their defending 23m area; they must wear protective headgear when defending a penalty corner or stroke; this player is referred to in the rules as a player with goalkeeping privileges. Or field only players; these players don’t have goalkeeping privileges or wears a different color shirt; no player may wear protective headgear except a face mask when defending a penalty corner or stroke.

The ladies team of The Netherlands is really popular is in the world of hockey. They won a lot of competitions: They won the Olympic gold medal three times. They were almost in the top three for three times. They are seven times the champions of the world cup competition.

Annabelle Hoogakker, The Netherlands