Winter break has arrived for most students, which also means that in this short three week period, there will be a gazillion hangouts planned among all of your friends at home. These hangouts can range from the typical restaurant meetups and ice skating gatherings to meeting up at raves and traveling long distances together. However, these plans all have one thing in common: they are highly unfeasible for the typical broke college student, especially if multiple friend groups have these same plans. To help out all y'all broke students like me, here's a list of things you can do together that won't cause your wallet to cry.
1. Bake and watch a movie
The only funds this plan requires is gas money for the few miles that some friends will have to travel and at most $10 total for baking ingredients. Not only can you guys bond and catch up on life while baking, you can also scroll through Netflix together and spend half an hour recommending shows to each other until you actually find a movie that everyone wants to watch.
2. Hike a local trail
This plan not only costs absolutely no money, but it encourages a healthy lifestyle that most college students no longer adopt. What could be better than drinking hot chocolate on the top of a mountain overlooking a lake while goofing off with your best friends?
3. Start a new show together
You guys haven't met up in four months - someone had to have started a new show and become obsessed with it. Maybe it's the latest season of Black Mirror, or maybe it's an over the top Korean drama. No matter what kind of show it is (and also how bad you might find it), it's always fun to just binge watch a show together, point out easter eggs, and laugh over unrealistic drama together.
4. Give each other a mini photoshoot
In this day and age, there's always one or two people in each friend group who owns a camera. If not, smartphone photo quality today isn't that far behind. Spend a few hours wandering around aesthetic parts of your town to take your next Facebook profile pictures or Insta posts. This is not only a nice way to bond with your friends again, it'll also give you a chance to explore your hometown.
5. Host a potluck and sleepover
If everyone brings a homemade dish, each person only has to spend a few dollars on ingredients. This is a fun hangout to plan if everyone in your friend group has a history of eating ramen for days in a row at school because they didn't know how to cook. Not only will they be forced to learn a dish, the rest of you will be forced to eat it afterwards. A sleepover will bring friends together once again without a time constraint to worry about.