Summer is finally here, school is out, and I have time to have more of a social life. Actually, on second thought, scratch that.

One of the hard realities about staying in Bloomington after the school year has ended is that the majority of your friends leave town leaving you wondering what to do on the weekends.

In my case, all my friends from IU except for a handful went home. I would have done the same, but all my high school friends decided not to go back.

So my choices were: be incredibly lonely at home, or have some kind of a social life here and try to meet new people at the same time. Of course, I chose to stay here.

I like to believe that I’m an extrovert, but at the same time I tend to spend most of my time around close friends.

They know me best and there’s less of a chance of things getting awkward.

Because of that my plans for the summer were to hang out with them whenever I got the chance. Granted, the problem with that is they have lives too.

Jobs, internships, and family issues tend to be more important than someone’s social life so this meant I needed to get creative when it meant making plans on the weekend.

A lot of this creativity included me going to visit friends in Indianapolis. I made that drive three times in four weekends.

I spent all of Memorial Day weekend crashing on the couch of my high school friends’ apartment before going with them to the Indy 500.

However, I decided to live in Bloomington and not Indianapolis this summer, so making the hour drive north every week is something that I don’t think I should be doing.

Because of this getting to know new people here is a must, and so far it has been paying off.

One of those trips to Indianapolis was with a friend I made last semester. We decide to go watch the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.

In all honesty Bloomington is starting to feel a lot more home and I’m glad I stayed here. One of the best weekends I’ve had here was when my friend, whom I went to the Grand Prix with, decided to have a bonfire in his backyard.

A lot of the night was just spent with us laughing at the fact neither of us actually knew how to keep a fire going. (We eventually got it going when we resorted to using charcoal.)

The best part of the experience though was getting to know someone, whom was still somewhat unfamiliar to me, in a totally new way. It honestly reminded me why I love people so much.

In the same way I have started hanging out with people from my summer classes. Turns out more people than I thought share my passion for photography.

The weekend after I spent two days on my high school friends’ couch I went out to the area surrounding Bloomington with a girl from my journalism class and we spent well over an hour just taking pictures.

I found myself bonding with someone over something that was pretty personal to me. Even though I had only known her for a few weeks.

Now, I am honestly pretty optimistic for the rest of the summer.

To allow myself to be a little vulnerable I have been somewhat scared for the upcoming semester this fall. One of my closest friends is living IU for awhile and I am confused as to what it means for a relationship.

But, because of the experiences I share with people I have only known for a little while, I know things will be alright.