Have you ever thought of having to start your life over? Make new friends, go to a new school, adapt to a new environment? Well, that’s pretty much what happens when you move to a new state. My name is Madison and I had to do all those things.

It was the summer before 8th grade, that’s when my family began our new adventure. We drove from Mount Pleasant, Utah to Columbia, Missouri. It was a huge change. Mount Pleasant was a very small town. The population was about 700. The school I had attended had grades 7th and 8th. All together there was a little over 300 students. You can now see that moving from a small town to a city would be quite a change.

When my family and I finally got to the border like we were all very excited. We were finally, after two days, done with driving. After we stepped out of the car, that’s when it hit us. It was so ridiculously humid we couldn’t believe it. It was like as soon as we stepped out of our air conditioned car, a layer of sweat coverd us. It was disgusting. The other thing was there were no mountains at all, just trees, thousands and thousands of trees.

That is when we knew we weren’t in Utah anymore. Well, we kind of already knew way before that but for good story sake we’ll say we didn’t.

When we first got to Columbia we lived with my mom’s friend Greg. He lives on the Rockbridge/Jeff. Jr. distinct, so my mom and I were planning on me going to Jeff Jr. instead I’m not going to lie; I was scared of going to a new school and making new friends. It’s not an easy thing to get used to so quickly. I was scared of what they might “label” me as, little Mormon girl maybe, just because I was from Utah.

One day, I was in the living room watching TV. It was around 7:30pm. I heard yelling outside my door, not the yelling of someone getting hurt but the yelling you hear when teenagers make fun of their friends. I ignored it, because I was nervous to go out and talk to them. I didn’t know what I would say. Anyways, 7:30 is also about the time my mom gets home from work, so as she was arriving home she saw all the kids outside hanging out, and started to talk to them. She asked them what their names were, what school they went to, how old they were. If you ask me, I think that’s super weird. About ten minutes later my mom walks in the front door and starts lecturing me about making friends. For one thing, I know for a fact that I know how to make friends. Sure, I was a little nervous but that didn’t mean I forgot how to make friends. You can probably guess what happened next, my mom made me go outside and meet them.

Surprisingly, they were all very nice! I met my first friend, her name was Summer. I also met my friends Courtney, Zach and Jake. I didn’t know why I didn’t meet them earlier.

I soon figured out that I wouldn’t be attending Jeff. Jr. I found this out shortly after we moved out of Greg’s house into one of our own. I would be attending another school, but I wasn’t nervous at all, more excited then anything. I knew I would make tons of friends and be just fine, and that’s exactly what happened. I went through a lot of challenges on the way, but I worked around them. I really do love Columbia and I am more than happy we decided to move here!