What would be your ideal way to spend five days during summer vacation? How about in a new, exciting city, making hundreds of new friends, and living out your most incredible dreams?

That's exactly what I with four school friends (and other kids from all across the country), did for a week this past summer. As a result of a contest sponsored by the National Organization of Oddfellows and Rebekahs, we qualified by writing essays for a week in New York City learning first-hand more about life than ever could be taught. Officially, the trip was a "Pilgrimage For Youth" to the United Nation to learn how the U.N. is run and how it works, but, as it turned out, the United Nations was only a part of our learning experience.

During the week, I joined kids from Washington state, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota, and across Canada. Being separated from our school friends made me become independent and develop "people skills." I developed more self-confidence. With new friends I saw the sights. We went to the Broadway production of "A Chorus Line" to Liberty Island and Wall Street.

We saw first-hand the differences between the Trump Plaza and the homeless sleeping on the street in front. We shopped in Macy's and exchanged all the day's gossip at night before curfew with people who felt like they had been our friends for years.

We were a group of normal teenagers who were forced to be responsible for what we said and did.

We also learned how the United Nations, one of the most powerful and effective organizations in our world is managed as well as learning how people from other parts our own country, live and how similar we are despite our language and geographic boundaries.

My trip is over now, and school has begun again, but through pictures and correspondence with the friends I made, the memories are sure to last. n