It sounds as if your friend was doing his study by distance learning. It is a (JAA imposed) condition of these courses that students must do a certain minimum amount of in-house training before the exams. In most cases this amounts to 2 periods each of 2 weeks duration.
It is possible to do the exams in the US. The schools in Florida have combined their efforts to produce a single exam centre. I understand that the use of this centre is included in the course fees for students studying at any of the three schools involved. But students from other schools are required to pay an additional fee to use the exam centre.
I also inderstand (have been told by a student who studied there) that for any resits, even the students of the Florida schools must pay an additional fee to reuse the exam centre. I believe the fee is about $300, but I may well be wrong.