Winter break is a great thing. It means you finally finished the fall semester of another year at school and the stress of finals is gone. It also means that you get to go home and see your parents and the pets you missed so much.
However, there can be one downfall to winter break. If you live in a small country town but your college is in a bigger city, coming home can be boring. There are only four fast food restaurants, no doordash, and you may not even have a movie theatre! My town sure doesn't. So here's a list of things to keep you entertained (for the most part) while home.
Drive the backroads
Now this is a classic country town move. Get one friend or a whole group together, put someone with good music taste on aux, fill up the tank, and drive the backroads at night. You’ll get to jam to good music and catch up with all of your friends while enjoying the starry night and occasionally forgetting where you are until you see that old barn up ahead. This is personally one of my favorite things to do.
Hang in the local “spot”
For some towns this may be one spot everyone goes, for others each class may have had their own. For my group we hung out in the middle parking lot of one of our bigger parks, while the “bubs” went down to what was coined The Circle. A couple grades ahead of us went to the bank lot and some even hang around the McDonalds parking lot. Either way, we all had a place that we would meet up every night like clockwork to talk about our day and maybe even play cards or catch.
Drive to Steak’n’Shake
Once the park becomes too boring at about 12am, it’s time to bop on over to steak’n’shake. For us this meant a 45 minute drive to the next bigger town over, but the car ride there and back is what made those trips.
Shoutout to my regular order of fries with cheese and a Dr. Pepper.
Make a TikTok
There’s going to be a day when no one is available because they’re at work or with family and you’re going to be home alone. This is when I suggest you venture out and make a TikTok, it can be about anything so get creative and dumb. Maybe learn a dance and once your friends are available you can teach it to them like the middle school days. No pressure to post it my man.
Spend a Day in the City
Take a Saturday and go to “the city” for Applebee’s and the mall. For me this means driving an hour from Illinois into Indiana but it’s worth it. You can go to H&M and eat at a sit down restaurant that you don’t have near you. If you’re feeling adventurous you can hit up the bowling alley or the movie theatre and make a whole day of it.
When you’ve finally had enough of the big town life, you can head home and meet up with everyone in your spot and start the process all over again.
So enjoy the holiday season in your little yeeyee town with a population of 5,000 like the rest of us. 🤠
