Moving to a new house is not easy but making friends is even harder. In the summer before third grade, my home seemed to have thousands of people all talking, playing, and making a mess. With my sister and I both growing up and starting to be more active we were running into each other. We decided that we needed more space and should move. At the time, we lived on a small culdesac on the West side of Wilmington in a small home with a fairly large backyard. Back then, I attended the Shawsheen School. I played hockey, soccer, baseball, and flag football. I was sad to go but excited for what would come next. Little did I know this would be way harder than I thought. 

Because we lived in a smaller home it was difficult to find someone to buy it. Eventually, a family of three with a mother, father, and a baby that was as big as a football decided it was a good fit. Now that we knew who was buying the house we had to find one we wanted to move into. We knew we wanted to stay in Massachusetts but didn’t know where. My parents looked all around until we found a nice empty plot of land on the north side of Wilmington. We needed to wait for our house to be built and the new family wanted to move in so we put all of our belongings into a storage container and moved in with my grandparents. We were expecting to be there for around one week before we could move into our new house. Unfortunately, that was not the case. 

In the beginning, living with my grandparents wasn’t too bad. Actually, it was quite fun. We stayed up later, ate junk food, played games; anything you would do at a sleepover at your grandparents' house in second grade. Around this time baseball was starting so we were running around to games in Wilmington while we were staying in North Reading. This was difficult on my whole family. While the first day of school was getting closer and closer we still hadn’t been able to move in. I even had to change my birthday plans because we didn’t have a home. The house was finally ready after three weeks of waiting. Once we moved into my new house I was faced with a serious challenge. Making new friends.

All of my good friends had gone to the Shawsheen with me so I didn’t really know anyone. Luckily, a few days after I moved in I learned the neighbors had a boy around my age. He came over and introduced himself. His name was Ben and he would be going to the same school as me in the fall. We immediately bonded over our love for sports, as we both played baseball and soccer. Another thing we learned was that one of my dad’s old friends from high school lived up the street. He had two boys around my age named Dominic and Luca. We all loved video games and baseball so we eventually bonded over that. Once school started, I didn’t know many people but I did meet a boy named Jacob. He was from Tewksbury so he was new to this school as well. We bonded over the fact that we were new and the fact we both liked baseball and hockey.

Making friends was not an easy thing to do but luckily for me I met some great people who were willing to give me a chance. I am still very good friends with those people today and hope to be for a long time. Also, the moving process was very difficult and stressful for my family and me but we made it through and have been living here ever since I moved.