My best friend Anita,

In 4^th grade, I got the biggest surprise of my life, one of my lifelong best friends Anita. She had just came from Poland and she sat in the back of the classroom at Mrs. Torres’s and with barely any English I was able to form one of the best friendships of my life. As Anita started to learn the language I was in charge of helping her with anything that she needed and we then shared secrets and many laughs and she became one of the biggest role models ill always have in my life. Anita is a year and a half older than me and although at times she might have looked up to me I looked up to how hard working and full of good vibes she had.

While growing up we would have sleepovers at each other’s houses and her family became mine after a while. Our favorite things to do were turning on our PC webcams and sing or make up dances to Jonas Brothers songs. We even got lucky enough to go to a Jonas Brothers concert and we cried endlessly when Nick Jonas started singing “A little bit longer”. We were just 11 years old girls trying to fit in with the crowd at school but slowly that we didn’t care about the cliques going on and relied on each other through middle school, LOL! She was the one that was there to watch me have my first kiss on the top stairs of the outside of our grade school, we were there for when we had our first week-long middle school boyfriends (so funny), and we were there if we wanted to vent about just anything. I'm pretty sure we both taught each other how to put makeup on and would think that Sean Kingston's music was the absolute best.

As we approached 8^th grade we both knew that there was a high chance that we wouldn’t be able to attend the same high school but made such a great impact in each other’s lives and that we knew no matter the distance we could hang out again and everything would be just like it was. We were both lucky enough to still go to each other’s homecoming dances at our respective high schools and be able to text each other about anything, gossip, boys, and how much we thought we hated the loads of homework we had in high school. We promised each other in 5^th grade that one day we would be college graduates and be big shots in life.

She’s still the best friend I want to be a bridesmaid in my wedding for, she’s still the best friend that will come visit me when I have my first baby, and no matter how far away we are we still have each other in our hearts. Not many people get lucky enough to find childhood friends like how Anita and I found each other but those are the best kind of friendships. The types of friendship I still have prominent memories too even after 12 years. As I scrolled through facebook I found some of the oldest pictures of us that I have exact memories still stuck in my head for. ENJOY. Anita KOCHAM CIE <3