Please direct your friends to joinmastodon.org or another instance of your choice like octodon.social, toot.cat or toot.cafe, etc. mastodon.social is "default" choice for a lot of people and it's getting kinda hammered right now.
@Arara yay, looking around is always good :)
Maybe you've already found it, but if not, in your settings you can export a list of the people you follow and import it at another instance. That makes moving around a bit easier sometimes.