Harvard

As I looked down at my plane ticket, I realized I was sitting next to Hunter, not Ben. "This should be...interesting." I thought to myself. Hunter had always seemed like a nice guy, but I never really got the vibe that he was fond of me. Well, as cliche comedies go, Hunter began to tease me about the magazine I was reading, and we started talking. To give you the Reader's Digest version, we became the best of friends within four hours. It's funny how a flight can do that to you.

Landing in Boston, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Everyone had told me how horrible the snow would be and how many appendages would acquire frost bite before this week was over. Being a Southerner, I was not exactly looking forward to this...experience. Yet as I looked out the window, I turned to Hunter and said,"What snow?" Even walking out of the airport, we still had spotted no snow of any kind, and my disappointment was beginning to show. "Well i mean it is pretty cold here," Coach Stewart said encouragingly "Maybe it will snow tonight." There was no way I was gonna call forty-five degrees cold, when just that morning back home, we had just reached the slightly chilly twenty-five degrees.

The next morning, Hunter and I finally found snow, and had a very puny but satisfactory snowball fight. The dry-cold was exhilarating, and soon Ben was joining in on our new-found winter entertainment. Coach Stewart and his wife took us all over town, showing us every tourist hot-spot from Cheers to the exact location of the first shot fired at the Boston Massacre (which, oddly, was simply a circular pattern of bricks in the middle of the side walk-no labels or advertisements. We only found it due to our handy map.) At night, however, the "three amigos" (as we had begun to refer to ourselves) were allowed to wander about the streets as long as we stuck together, which was no longer an issue-there was no separating us.

After galavanting across Harvard Square and back, we came to the decision that Boston was a great place to live (Although, upon arriving home, the Coast humidity welcomed me like a mother's warm arms, forever changing my mind.) We returned to the hotel after our little adventures and sit in the hallway between our rooms and share our life stories. We discussed everything from politics to those who had broken our hearts. The three of us talked for hours about the places we had been and the people we had met, and we came to realize that we were all more alike than we had realized before. Although we were there for the Harvard International Debate Tournament, we had more fun getting to know each other and becoming the best of friends.

To this day, when I think of Boston, all those wonderful memories come rushing back to me. As long as I shall live, I will always remember that city as the place I would never forget. It was the place I met my two best friends.