{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-story-js","path":"/story/a-journey-to-a-m/","result":{"pageContext":{"data":{"id":"-d8ff1dd2-5af1-528d-b431-9954042324b8","authorFirstName":"Merik","storyTitle":"A Journey to A Fresh Start","photo":{"asset":{"url":"https://cdn.sanity.io/images/nr9digz2/production/95f19ad4a7774725c56defd562c6aad25de240a7-2475x3712.jpg"}},"audio":{"asset":{"url":"https://cdn.sanity.io/files/nr9digz2/production/553da63a1816dac98b874921a92303689cb708d4.m4a"}},"secondLanguageAudio":null,"school":{"name":"Ka'u High and Pahala Elementary School","city":"Pahala","location":"Hawaii"},"tags":[],"_rawText":[{"_key":"0cf8f38e23e0","_type":"block","children":[{"_key":"609f4f9bd1c50","_type":"span","marks":[],"text":"When I was younger I always wanted to live in a city and go to a big school. I grew up in a small town outside of a city. I always went to the city for grocery shopping or to do something fun and it always made me wish I could just live there. In my small town, it was super boring and I only had a couple friends because there weren't many kids to make friends with. I grew up going to that small school from kindergarten up until 9th grade. The summer after 9th going into 10th, my family and I made an unexpected move. The new school I was going to go to was way bigger. I went from a school with a graduation class of 50 to a graduation class of 500. I was so excited to make new friends and meet all kinds of new people and have a nice school to go to. The first week I made some friends and knew I could make more. After a couple of weeks, I realized how I had way more friends than I had in the small school. But I started to notice how I didn’t have any friends like the friends I had in my hometown. It made me quit sports because I had no friends that made it fun. I would never have a best friend like I used to have and I started to not enjoy the school I was going to. I went through my whole 10th grade year without really having any friends. The start of 11th grade at that school, I started to hang out with one of my friends from the year before. We started to hang out everyday after school and we started getting closer to each other. We decided to hang out with a kid from our school that we didn’t really know. We just drove around for a while. We all ended up becoming best friends and hung out almost everyday. I was happy to finally have friends again. Then over the Christmas break of 11th grade, we made another unexpected move to Hawai‘i. I was excited about it because it is Hawai‘i! And who wouldn't want to live there! But I realised that I had to leave my best friends behind again. After we got to Hawai‘i, I really enjoyed it because there was so much to do and I thought how nice it would be to have friends and hang out near the beach. The school I was going to go to was another small school. I started recently at this school and it’s been hard to make close friends again. I started playing sports again so I could try and make more friends from other schools too. I know it’s going to take time to make best friends again so I'm trying not to worry about it too much. Going to this school has made me realise how much more I like small schools though. Even though I always thought bigger schools would be cooler. I always thought it would have been cool to be the new kid and get to make new friends. But it’s not as nice as you would think. So always be grateful for the friends you have because you might not always be with them."}],"markDefs":[],"style":"normal"}]}}},"staticQueryHashes":["3309388390","890781507"]}