Imagine waking up one day and you’re in a whole different state, or even country. At the age of 13, I moved from Florida to New York. These places are very different from one another in many ways. When I first arrived in Brooklyn, my first impression was nothing special. Every part of me loved Florida so much more. I didn’t want to be in Brooklyn. Florida was so much cleaner and everything is so organized, more parking. But to wake up one day and end up in an airplane on the way to New York is life changing. 

When I came to Brooklyn,  I didn’t bring anything. No clothes or any of my expensive shoes. Which made me most upset about this trip. I only had my phone and a charger. I lived with my father, and he genuinely helped with settling into the environmental change.  I also didn’t know anyone else, but my father. Later that week, I was enrolled in school and everything was different. I wasn’t as bubbly and wasn’t myself. I almost got into a fight, and it was my second day of school. This made me even feel worse about New York, but on the other side, I learned new things. I didn’t know what a deli was or that someone can have a whole apartment on top of a deli or convenience store. The transportation was also really different. A lot of people are walking and some use cars, trains, or a bus.  The various modes of transportation are amazing.  A bus would come every hour there, you most likely would need a car.  But in New York, the streets are always so busy. Everywhere you go there will be so many people. But, maybe I needed to explore more places and it wouldn’t be too bad.

Later that year, I came in 2019, Covid hit. Not the best of times. Also it wasn’t best for me to be indoors while I just came from another place, but unfortunately we had to. It was the worst time. Even worse, I didn’t really have a freshman year because of it. By that point, all I wanted to do was experience life. Staying with your dad for a while can get irritating. All the fun stuff was closed and there were no “in person” schools. It was frustrating at first.  Then a year later, school opens and I am a sophomore at FDR. Honestly I picked FDR, because of the trips, and I loved the diversity.  FDR made me absolutely love NYC. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. After a while,  you start to just accept things in life. Everything that happened, I had no control over, and I had to respect that. It was hard adjusting in a new place, but there’s times you are put in uncomfortable situations. Now I can say NYC is way better than Florida.