Tag Archives: partying
How to Save Money For Traveling!
By focusing on how to save money for traveling, you can join these guys in Europe, or wherever you endeavor to go!
With graduation looming at the end of your upcoming senior year, you have big plans. Instead of strolling off the stage with your diploma and marching straight into a cubicle, you’re going to hit the road on a multi-month (maybe multi-year?) trek of exploration and discovery around the world. You want to do this while you are young and physically able to climb mountains, crawl through ruins, discover obscure mysterious islands and endure rough and tumble night buses, and for this, we applaud you.
Far too many people wait until retirement when their health has failed them, leaving them unable to fulfill all the dreams that they had put off for countless decades. One reality of travel that is constant, no matter how slim your budget, is that you need to have sufficient money to travel for any length of time.
Economy class fares cost the same for all of us, so in this final year of school, you need to acquire the eye of the tiger when it comes to saving cash from whatever job you have (if you don’t, start looking).
The following five tips will show you how to save money for traveling in no time, allowing you to get to the fun part of travel: planning out all your amazing adventures!
1) Stop eating out
Bear in mind that this doesn’t mean to stop eating: we all need adequate nutrition to survive. What this tip does prescribe is this: no more lunches at Chipotle, midnight pizza runs, or hungover breakfasts at your local sports bar. Look up some beginner recipes and start making food for yourself. Start off simple, then branch out to more complex meals. Soon, you will be eating better than ever, while spending considerably less dough than you were before. Talk about a win-win proposition!
2) Wave goodbye to your cable company
With abundant free entertainment on Youtube, Vimeo and Reddit, and cost-effective options on Netflix, Hulu and iTunes, why are you still shoveling your cash into your cable company’s furnace for the sake of a few measly channels? Endure the 30 minute phone call you’ve been dreading and cut the cord tomorrow, and watch as all that wasted capital begins piling up in your account instead of padding the wallet of some greedy CEO.
3) Cut back on drinking (and when you must, do it at home)
While going dry would have a dramatically positive effect on your finances, we realize that the college experience is often drenched in booze. So instead of cutting out the alcohol altogether, go out once per week maximum instead of the multiple nights per week that you are doing now. If you normally go out once per week, then take alternating weekends off from the bottle. Band together with potential travel companions and find fun, non-alcoholic things to do on those days to make adherence easier for everybody.
On weeks when you do drink, opt to stay home and avoid the expense of cover charges, marked-up alcohol prices and expensive cab fares. Instead, have your friends over to your house, and host the party there instead!
4) Seek out freelance work
With all that free time between classes (trust us, you’ll be looking back at this surplus time fondly when you enter the real world), you likely have time to find a second job, or failing that, a freelance gig on the side. Got a way with words? Become a freelance writer. Skilled in the art of editing/manipulating photos? Flog your Photoshop wizardry to the people of the internet in return for monetary compensation. $200 here, $600 there … it all adds up fast.
5) With a month left to go, sell everything that won’t fit in your backpack
With your plane tickets booked and your preliminary plans getting you excited, one last thing you can do to top off the pile of gold in your vault is to sell off all your stuff. Furniture, trinkets, gadgets, kitchen ware … anything that doesn’t fit in your backpack, or will have a practical use on the road – GONE. Sentimental items should be boxed and stored at your parent’s house or at the home of a trusted friend, but all that other stuff? Liquidate it into sweet, sweet spending cash!
How to stay healthy during college
If you are choosing your meals like this gal, then you know a few things about how to stay healthy during college!
Despite the fact that you are as young as you’ll ever be, your body isn’t invincible. Put it under enough stress and fail to take the proper precautions and beer bellies will sag, fatigue will drain your energy stores, and diseases/illnesses will compromise your health. College can (and should) be a fun time in your life, but don’t neglect the foundation that supports everything that sits upon it.
There are several areas to which you should pay special attention to when looking into how to stay healthy during college; ensure that the following five areas are taken care of, and your life in college will be every bit as vibrant as it should be.
1) Maintain a balanced diet
This point is repeated so often that many glaze over when they hear it. But would it be mentioned so often if it wasn’t a fundamental cornerstone of your overall health? In college, cafeterias serve up many fried foods on their buffet lines, allowing students to go back for as many helpings as they desire.
Limit the amount of fried, carb heavy food you eat, instead opting for meals composed of whole foods (weighted towards greens/lean protein) as much as possible. Don’t go back for seconds, and when you’re back at the dorm, limit ordering out for pizza to your cheat day (once per week), and avoid snacking outside of meals the rest of the time.
2) Get plenty of sleep
In college, quality sleep can be at a premium, but that doesn’t diminish its importance, as it is this rest time that allows your body to properly heal from the physical and mental stresses that it endures during the day. Try to seek out accomodation where getting undisturbed sleep can be had more often than not. If it is a night where extraneous noise is unavoidable, wear earplugs and an eyemask to ease you into your slumber.
Avoid using alcohol to induce sleep, as it messes up your sleep patterns to the point where you often wake up feeling just as tired as you were when you fell asleep. Another trick to get the rest you need is to wash your face before retiring, as a going over with face moisturizer may make you feel more at ease physically, thus easing your transition to dreamland.
3) Drink moderate amounts of alcohol
Remember back in #1 where we contraindicated consumption of simple carbs? Well, beer and many forms of alcohol are basically bottled bread, making them the fastest pathway to the dreaded Freshman 15 weight gain. This doesn’t mean you have to abstain from booze while your friends live it up, but it does mean you have to be conscious of the effects of what you’re consuming. As a consequence, limit your consumption to once per week, and don’t drink to get blackout drunk (just a few will do). Nights out are more fun when you remember them, anyway!
4) Engage in physical activity on a regular basis
While following a protein-dense diet will help keep the weight off, it won’t build a strong body capable of getting through the stressors of daily life in college with ease. In order to get a bod that will back you up no matter what any given day will throw at you, you’ll need to engage in regular physical activity.
Simple ways to do this include walking, hitting the gym, and registering for intramural sports. Not only will this reinforce your health, you’ll improve your looks and make new friends in the process … winning!
5) Practice safe sex … every time
Don’t delude yourself that you can ride raw “just this one time” and you’ll be fine. It’s during unprotected encounters like this where debilitating diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhea and even HIV can be passed between partners. Always wrap it up when you get lucky, and if you forgot to bring one like an idiot, then no intercourse for you … period.
5 Fun Drinking Games Anyone Can Learn!
Disclaimer: College Blender.com does not promote or endorse underage or binge drinking. All of these games are intended for those of legal drinking age and to be done in moderation.
While drinking alcohol isn’t a prerequisite to having a good time in college, let’s be realistic: a comfortable majority of students enjoy a beer…or many on a semi-regular basis. It’s not hard to see why: freshmen are celebrating their liberation from their parents, sophomores and juniors are stress-balling about making the excellent grades they need to graduate with honors, while seniors are freaking the hell out about their pending release into the Real World … and the start of those dreaded student loan payments.
But let’s forget about all that tonight, as we are all collectively in the present moment … why not be one big happy drunk family together? As fun as normal socializing is while consuming your favorite alcoholic beverage, sometimes a little stirring of the pot is necessary to elevate a party from awesome to epic.
This is where drinking games come in, as it adds equal parts of social interaction, shared laughs, and most importantly, wanton consumption of alcohol! So get started on that hefty pre-game meal to soak up the punishment that your liver is about to take, because after playing one or more of the games below, your head will be feeling the effects the next morning if you don’t prepare properly (drink water regularly through the evening as well, and have fun!)
1) Flipcup
Beer pong is so ten years ago. The plastic drinking glass game that is sweeping the nation these days is the intense, fast-paced game of Flipcup. The object of this contest is simply this: you take two teams, and line them up down a table (3 per side minimum).
Filling the cups halfway (all the way if you’re truly ambitious) with beer, the first grouping of drinking combatants chugs their beer, placing the cup upside down on the edge of the table when finished. The player then has to flip the cup so that it lands on its proper bottom without falling over. When this task is successfully completed, the next person down the line can drink. First side to complete these tasks successfully to the end wins!
2) Card games
There are many card games that can be made into drinking games, or were invented with drinking in mind. Asshole is a prominent one, where the deuce is the trump card, with values descending A,K, Q through to the worst cards, 4 and 3. The first player can lead with any card (the worst one(s) they have is the smart play), and the next player has to get rid of the same card or better.
Combos add more excitement to the game, where a player getting rid of three 5’s for example would compel the next to play a three card combo or higher, lest they have to pass on their turn. The president is the one who finishes first, vice president is 2nd, and the last two players are saddled with the titles vice asshole and asshole, compelling them to drink half and chug their beer respectively.
3) Drinking games based on movies or TV shows
These types of games proliferate widely throughout the internet, with combos of drinks and chugging being assigned for the cliché actions and sayings that actors/actresses in common movies and TV shows perform on a regular basis. An example out of the infinite number that exist: In one particular Walking Dead drinking game, one of the cues to drink includes when Rick tries to restore hope to the group (all the time without success, it seems!), and chugging happens whenever somebody gets killed by a zombie (even if they are a redshirt).
4) Quarters
This game seems simple enough at the start, but the sorry state of most people’s coordination skills (made worse by all the drinks you’ll consume by losing to someone more experienced than you) and understanding of physics make this a challenging but fun contest.
In order to play, start with a glass in the middle of the table. You then take a quarter and attempt to bounce it off the table and into said glass. A successful shot means you get to pick who takes a drink. The shooter keeps taking shots at the glass until they miss, whereupon the quarter goes to the next player. If you wish to try again after your first attempt, some versions allow you to declare “chance”. Hitting this shot allows you to keep going as per usual, but missing results in a penalty of at least two drinks.
5) Century Club (attempt with beer ONLY)
Also known as Power Hour in a toned down version of this game, players attempting to join the Century Club bring a shotglass and at least eight beers with them to the event. A song list with splits that occur once every two minutes needs to be prepared beforehand, as when the song switches, a drink of beer from their filled up shotglass must be taken. A fun thing to do during this 3+ hour boozefest is to pass around a pen and a large notepad/scribbler, noting the thoughts of participants as they descend the downward spiral into excessive drunkeness!
What other fun drinking games do you know? Share them in the comments below!
3 Awesome Places for Spring Break!
While college is a fun place to be most of the time, the pressures of school can mount quite heavily at times. After all, you’re shelling out tonnes of money (often, it’s money you don’t even have) in order to gain a highly valuable piece of paper that will heavily influence the degree of prosperity that you may enjoy later in life. To add insult to injury, much of America in the second semester is often plagued by miserable weather, with snow, ice, and icy winds that just cut right through you.
Don’t you wish you were lying on a toasty beach instead this past winter, where shady palms, cold beers/fruity drinks, and the warmth of an ever-present blanket of tropical heat could have helped to take the pain of your nightmare experience with the polar vortex and midterm exams?
Don’t make the same mistake next year.
It’s July, and while all your fellow students are busy with their summer jobs, partying it up, or just chillaxing in general, now is the time to strike to get in while prices for next Spring Break are relatively low. While you will definitely benefit from getting in while demand for these vacations are still low, there is one question left to be resolved by you: where will you and your buddies be based for your week of fun and debauchery?
If that point has you stuck, let us help you out of your rut by suggesting three awesome places for Spring Break that you will never forget … ever!
1) Miami, Florida
If you started your search by checking out Miami flights for spring break, you’ve definitely picked a destination that will prove to be an unforgettable getaway for your and your mates. The South Beach area boasts one of the liveliest urban beaches in the country, with long stretches of perfect white sand, and endless masses of beautiful people out soaking up the rays.
Once the sun goes down, the nightlife a few blocks back from the beach pulses with activity, but be prepared to bring your wallet, as many places charge cover that costs at least $20, with many of their drinks costing just as much. Still, it will prove to be a classy night out, unlike the dive-bar atmosphere that you’re used to back in your college’s home town.
2) South Padre Island, Texas
If you’re seeking a more down-to-earth, drink until everything goes fuzzy type of experience, then chances are South Padre Island will be more in line with your expectations. The focus here is more on having a blowout good time then who has the fanciest watch. People usually check into a hotel, party until the sun comes up, passing out until they come to, head out to the beach to tan, play in the waves, and then proceed to do it all over again until it’s time to go home.
3) Cancun, Mexico
Sometimes, it takes leaving the country in order to elevate your Spring Break experience to the next level. Moving the venue for your mid-semester blow out to Cancun, Mexico achieves this beautifully, as you will be surrounded by sand so white it will blind you if you forget your shades back at the hotel room, local food that will blow Taco Bell out of the water, and the resident Mexican people gregariousness and love of life will enhance your time here, forever setting the bar for good times to a ridiculously high level!
Know of any other fun places for Spring Break? Share them below in the comments!
