By Masahiro Eda

In remembering my August of last year, I feel it was a dream as if I was sleeping. It's too fantastic to be true. I think this is not exaggerated expression. They were days like a dream. Really.

On August 4th, 2007, only 16 students of the English Study Tour Group left for America. We stayed for one month and came back to Japan on September 2nd. Professors Kato and Radcliffe supervised us. I think they had to make strenuous efforts to lead us, because all of us have strong personality.

On August 4th, we arrived at Boston where we stayed to study English for three weeks. Boston is such a wonderful city that I want this city to be my second home. After Boston, we went to New York, Washington D.C and San Francisco. But this time I want to write about Boston.

We were waiting for buses in front of a hotel and the school we would be attending. The buses took us to our home stays. Almost everyone seemed nervous, but I was really looking forward to going. I am a really coward and timid person but I love to learn something new or something I don't know. I am curious, too.

My host family's house was not so far from the school. Just 3 or 4 station of subway and 30 minutes was enough to go to the school. My host parents Peter and Sally received me cordially. They had two others students named Linda and Allen. They were in the same situation as me. Linda is a beautiful Swiss and she can speak English very well. Allen cant speak well but I think he is better than 18-year-old students in Japan. And Haidie─a big black dog!─received me, too. There was a small park near the house. I want there almost everyday to work around and I met many people and made many memories. I spent my days in America with them.

I have advice how to have fun in America. If you go abroad like me with a class, use your English at full blast! There is no other place where you can make friends easily. Everyone else around you in classes also wants to make friends and their English is not perfect. Your English is not, too. When two people need friends, it's easy to be friends. So you should talk to someone, and if there were pretty girls, you Must speak to her. need friends, so you guys have to be friends. I'm not saying that you must speak to a beautiful girl who is a perfect stranger and can't speak any language you can speak. Although Japanese are thought to be shy, just remember that you are in America. There is no reason you should speak to Japanese in Japanese. I'll give you this advice. You have to make a goal before your departure such as "I will make more than 20 friends!"

I spent the first week hanging out with a handsome guy from Germany. If we hadn't met in this situation, I would have just envied him and we would not be friends now. And he has a cute cousin: Of course I became friends with her, too. In any other situation I would just have look at her from a far.

On Wednesday, we went to the Museum of Fine Arts for free. It's a really famous museum and there were a lot of people there. It was so good that I didn't want to leave. On the second weekend, the Beach Boys' concert took place by chance for free. Of course I went. I met my friends from Germany and saw the Beach Boys for free. I thought the gods must have been smiling down on me.

After dinner, as routine, I went to the park and joined some children playing soccer there and I could be their hero. It's easy to get along with children. I was happy to have played soccer. One ball is all you need to make friends through soccer.

I could use my English and be courageous as long as I could make friends. You can't imagine how a wonderful city Boston is until you go there. There are big parks full of trees and old buildings between big and high buildings fitted with glass. And there are many surprisingly friendly and nice people. As I said, you can enter the Museum of Modern Art every Wednesday for free. What's more, there are many places you can feel American history thanks to Boston's unique role in American history.

At school you can make friends easily and there are many places you can not see in Japan. So if you could be a little more courageous and use your English to make friends, there is no doubt that your days in America will be like a dream. It's not difficult. Maybe I could do this and make many friends and nice memories, so my August of last year looks like a dream.

But this is not enough to explain why there is no August in my last year. I said I didn't write about cities we visited, but I must add a little bit: New York, the center of pop culture with "ground zero," Washington D.C., the center of history and politics, and San Francisco, the center of the West Coast gave us invaluable experiments.