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Meeting new friends in a new city
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Heather Peterson
Part of “wellness” for me is making connections and having friends in the community I live in. With more than 200,000 new people moving to the sunny state a year or about 600 a day, it seems Florida is the land of transplants and not many people are actually from here. What is great about that for us newcomers, is that it means we’re all in the same boat. We’re all living in a brand new state, away from the comfort of family and friends and in need of a new social circle.
If you really want to meet new friends, it does take effort. I have been pretty aggressive about this since I have two small kids and really wanted to meet other moms to hang out with and I’ve found that people are pretty receptive to meeting new people here. For example, a few weeks after moving here I was scanning craigslist for a bike for my daughter. I called a phone number of a woman nearby who was selling a bike, we got to talking and I found out she was about my age, married, and had a daughter my daughter’s age. So I told my husband to pack up the kids and that we were going to look at a bike and meet some friends! We hit it off with her and her husband and exchanged contact info and have become great friends. I also met some families through meetup.com and a group called “no drama mamas,” met some people through jobs, one I met at the mall and recently am trying to connect with a few moms at my daughter’s new school.
In the past year, I’ve made several acquaintances, about a half a dozen of what I’d call good friends and at least three of what I’d call close friends, the type I can call if I need something, trust with my kids and vent about just about anything. It can be difficult when we’re all so busy to make time for new people, but in order to make new friends you have to put time into it. You need to call or email, invite them to do things and show up when they invite you. It takes work, but it is worth it in the long run. It took a lot of effort on my part to find ways to meet people and then even more time in getting to know them, but my efforts have paid off. We’ve already been invited to parties, family outings, and play dates, and have some good friends we can count on here. Best of all, Florida is starting to feel more and more like home. We don’t know how long we’ll live here, but while we do, we want to get involved and make memories and friends that last a lifetime.
Here are some websites to meet people are: www.meetup.com , www.mops.com
