Introducing Your Friends - C1

Good afternoon, I'm Ali — a twenty-six-year-old primary school teacher who grew up in London and has lived in Manchester for the past two years. To give you a sense of who I am, I have known my closest friend, Tom, since primary school, and, notably, I met most of my other friends through football. Beyond the obvious, I try to meet up at least once a month even though we're all busy. At the same time, I value friends who are honest rather than just agreeable, particularly when other demands make that harder than it sounds. If there's a thread running through all of this, it's probably that I think distance has actually made some friendships stronger, not weaker. In many ways, what defines me has less to do with any single fact and more to do with how the friendships that survive a house move are usually the ones worth keeping.