We’re coming up on the last weeks of the semester here at Bowling Green. After finals (yuck!), everyone gets to go home for the holidays. It’s likely that you’ll spend some time catching up with old friends. I’ve always hated the awkwardness of meeting up with friends that you haven’t seen in a while, so I’ve come up with a small list of activities that might be fun to do with a group.
1. PowerPoint Presentation Nights
I’ve seen these all over TikTok and they’re so easy to do. Everyone gets to pick a topic and create a slideshow about it! You can choose silly topics like ranking all of your past exes, calling yourself out on your red flags, or explaining why Andrew Garfield is a better Spider-Man than Tom Holland. It’s a great way to laugh and learn more about a person’s interests.
2. Painting Puzzle Pieces
This one’s for your creative group of friends. Buy a cheap jumbo puzzle and have everyone paint a couple of the pieces with any design they like. It makes a beautiful, mismatched collage of designs once you put all of the pieces together, almost like a friend group consisting of different and unique personalities.
3. A Day of Color
This one might require some more thought but it’s still just as fun. Pick any color and map out a day full of activities that involve that color. For example, if you choose blue, you might play a blue-colored board game, bake blueberry muffins, and go ice skating. If you choose red, you might go for a Target run, have a red-themed photoshoot, and binge-watch movies on Netflix. Make sure you color coordinate your outfits, too!
4. Gingerbread House Competition!
What better way to reconnect with old friends than with a little friendly competition? You can buy kits to build gingerbread houses and have everyone decorate their own tasty home, or bonus points if you bake your own gingerbread pieces. To make things interesting, you could also work in teams where the decorator is blindfolded and the other person tries to guide them on what to do. Plus, this one could be done over a video chat if you have long-distance friends.
5. Gift Exchange
Just in time for the holidays, you could hold a mini Secret Santa gift exchange! Keeping in mind that some of your friends may be broke college students (that includes me), you could put a low price limit on the exchange or get each other gag gifts instead of real gifts. The best part is that the gift you receive will make you think of your friends until you see them again!
These are just some suggestions but, of course, they can be modified to fit any group of friends. Hopefully, braving the beginning of a cold winter and breaking the ice (no pun intended) with friends you haven’t seen in a while won’t be so bad now!