ゴールデンウィーク集中演習 Day 2

　エッセンスイングリッシュスクールの皆さん、こんにちは。今日も長時間の授業、お疲れさまでした。僕は教壇を自由に歩き回ることができますが、じっと椅子に座って合計7時間のレッスンを受けるのはすっごくハードだと思います。あと2日、僕も気合いを入れてやりますので、最後までやり通しましょう。ところで、今日の問題に出てきた単語について、ある思い出が蘇ってきたので、ショートエッセイを書いてみます↓。

Today, we had three vocabulary questions in Part 7. One of them was about "dry." Do you remember what it was "closest in meaning to"? If you don't, it might be a good idea to review your notes right now.

Anyway, that word reminded me of my first stay in the United States. When I was a teenager, I dropped out of high school, and I was a フリーター for a while. One of the things I enjoyed doing the most back then was to study sociology (社会学), and many of the books I was reading were originally published in English. I was reading their Japanese translations, but at some point it just occurred to me that it would be great if I could read them in English.

So I decided to go to the United States to improve my English. I chose one of the cheapest schools listed in the guidebook entitled 『成功する留学』. It was in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Why am I talking about this? How does it related to today's lesson? Well, Jonesboro was known as a "dry county." At first I didn't get the meaning. I mistakenly thought it had something to do with the climate.

The real reason, I later learned, was that it was prohibited to sell or consume alcohol in Jonesboro. The law required that the county be free from alcohol, so you couldn't buy beer or whisky. This was very surprising to me, as I had thought the United States was the land of liberty, and that people there enjoyed more freedom than anyone else in the world. Well, in a sense, that was true: the people of Jonesboro exercised their freedom to prohibit alcohol.

I was to find out that not everyone complied with this rule, but that's another story.