My father always used to tell me, "Sometimes you just need to change things up a little." I never truly understood what he meant until we moved to the small town known as Rockford. This slight relocation, as he called it, was definitely changing things up. I remember the exact day that my dad announced that we would be moving to Lake Bella Vista in Rockford, Michigan. My head quickly filled with scary thoughts as he continually reassured me that everything would be fine. Either way, I felt the world around me slowly begin to collapse. Living within a new city brought about many changes in my life. I had to adapt to the area, find some new friends, and establish a new pastime, and all in a city I knew nothing about.
             First of all, it's hard to feel comfortable in a new location where you are absolutely lost. It took me almost two years to feel fully established within the new community. For the first year of the relocation, I spent all my time at home, where I actually felt comfortable. While I was living in Rockford, I didn't know the surrounding atmosphere and didn't really care to explore it. I simply wanted to go back to my original home. Adjusting was hard because I missed many aspects of the home. For example, the fact that any retail store or fast food joint was within a fifteen-minute bike ride. I quickly found out that Rockford had very little to offer, and if you wanted to do any shopping or something exciting, you had to leave town and head somewhere else. Even though I had no idea where anything was within the city, I slowly became accustomed to the town. I've been mainly talking about the negative aspects of moving; however, moving to Rockford and establishing a new location also had its own advantages. I got used to no longer being confined in a tiny backyard surrounded by fencing. I was able to roam my backyard freely and enjoy the landscaping that was all new to me. This ability to roam includes the massive lake sittin...