With the passing of July 4th this summer, I have officially been in Boston for two-and-a-half years and the time has flown by. While it hasn’t always been easy, I have no regrets and cannot see myself living anywhere else. Making friends here proved to be a struggle at first, but then I found right where I belong.

I moved here for work — I didn’t know a soul in the city since my sister had moved to Washington D.C. six months prior and my only friend who stayed put after university decided to teach English in American Samoa. Casual, I know. Boston is a young and educated city. How could it not be with such a high concentration of colleges and universities in a relatively small area? Driving down Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge or walking through The Fenway, it feels like there is always another small university to discover. This however, I feel is Boston’s downfall.

Jobs in Boston are plentiful, with the massive health care industry and a growing number of start ups. From my experience, most people who tend to go to university in the Boston-area tend to stay in here, resulting in a fewer number of transplants than you would find in New York City, Chicago or the West Coast. And because of this, most people already have established groups of friends. Meeting new people is not the easiest task if you don’t go out of your way to do so. Remember, this is just a reflection on my experiences and not a blanket statement about how interactions here will go.

When I first moved in January 2015, no one could’ve predicted the storm that would come. From the end of January through the middle of March, I was snowed in more often than not with a record-setting snow fall. At the time, I was working on a two-person team and was the youngest person in the department by several years so making new friends did not come easily. I’m ashamed to say, but I ended up watching all seven seasons of Malcolm in the Middle over these three months since I had little else to do.

While I’m confident most people would describe me as a social person, I dislike being in situations where I don’t know anyone else — something I knew I would have to work past. Thankfully the internet is a powerful resource with websites like Meetup. There you can select your hobbies and interests and join groups of other like-minded people, for areas all across the country. I also stumbled upon a Boston-based subreddit, Boston Social Club, that was entirely focused on people looking to make new friends. There were always posts about going out to lunch downtown, grabbing a drink after work, or seeing a movie on a weekend. Sometimes, the group wouldn’t jive and it would get pretty awkward, or you’d lose track of time and have a wonderful night. When you’re meeting a group of strangers who are all willing to put themselves out there, you never really know.

My saving grace ultimately came through Meetup — I discovered the world of social sports leagues. After a week of internal deliberation, I finally decided to sign up for a summer kickball league through S3 — Single Social Sports at the time and recently rebranded to Simply Social Sports. This league proved to be people who were less focused on winning and more focused on just having fun. Teams were organized by age so there are rarely teammates outside of an age range of five years. The sponsor bar was a comfortable walk down the street and each team gets a free pitcher of beer as an incentive to go back and hang out afterwards. When eight or ten teams of people all with a common sport get together for two months, you’re bound to meet a friend or two, and that’s exactly how it happened for me.

Now two summers later, I’m in the midst of my third kickball season. I finally played volleyball during a winter league earlier this year. I branched out and have played in several soccer leagues through another social league, Social Boston Sports. There’s also Boston Ski and Snowboard Club, ClubWAKA, and many, many more. There are running clubs like the Boston River Rats — with whom my coworker occasionally convinces me run with — and Cambridge Running Club. There are LGBT sports leagues and running clubs. I just learned of GURL (Gay Urban Running League) a week or two ago from a friend. The possibilities are endless. There are different sports like broomball, corn hole, bowling, field and ice hockey, and even trampoline dodgeball.

These people that I’ve hung out with for the past summer, two, or three have become some of my closest friends in Boston. Whenever people ask how we met, they are surprised more often-than-not. So where ever you are, if you’re new to a city or just looking to meet some new people, have at it. Give it a shot.