A new host family

April 26th

This morning we went out to get breakfast with Laura and her host. Afterwards we were dropped off and were taken to UC Irvine. After a lunch, we had a lecture about the California anti-bullying preventive. In the first week of our stay in the USA, it has become clear that the problems thta the US is facing, are nowhere comparable to the problems in the Netherlands. I had expected to attend a lecture about bullying, because of it's effects on children (bed wetting, stomach ache, depression). It turned out to be a program to prevent people to get involved in gang related crimes (as bullied people can get violent......). Again this was a program that was financed with private money. The state of California is almost broke and all kinds of initiaves in education and health care are financed with private money. The effect of most of these programs is never measured.

After the lecture I went to my new (Indian) host family. They were very nice and wanted to know everything about the Netherlands, social security and the health care system.