International Students and The Winter Break
The wintertime, a time for people to stat sharing some time with each other while they are inside their houses. Besides being the seasonal representation of the ending of the fall and the summer, it’s also the beginning of the holiday season, and for many people the most expensive months of the end of the year. As most people must set their plans straight for them to be able to enjoy family gatherings, family dinners, or any type of event that involves a great number of people in a single place. Christmas and New Year’s Eve could be a rough time for people that don’t have a family, or they find themselves far away from them. A great example of this could be found on each of the international students that are scattered all around the world without a chance of going back to their home countries, they must stay in the same place that they are studying for the whole period of the winter break.
As its commonly known, staying on campus facilities during a time that most of the buildings are closed, demands for the unfortunate students to pay an extra prize to get access to a restricted number of services that would make their stay a little more pleasant. Services like, water, electricity, heaters, internet, and access to the kitchen facilities come alongside the payment of the extra fee. But there always another alternative for the students that don’t want to spend their holiday alone inside a university building, if they have a big number of friends, they could access easily to various options of hotel rooms that are available for them, or RB&B that with a low prize could give an accessibility for an estimated number of 15 people per house. Besides the option of renting a place together as friends, comes the third accessible scenario for the need of a place to stay, this relies more on good friendship and agreements, as may international students rent their own apartments to stay in while they are studying, when they go back to their home countries for the winter break some of them offer their apartments as rent free places to stay for the people that they trust.
As in both Carla Guibovich and Ana Canartes case, both got a group of friends that allowed them to stay at their places while they go back home for the break, without extra costs or paying high prizes for a hotel room, the only thing that they’ve got to take care of is their own food to survive through the holidays. It not only stays with the enough food that they need to get through the winter break, as these people isn’t going back home, they need their own holiday plans to avoid getting homesick, or depressed, from the lack of not seeing their families for a prolonged period. Plans like having a dinner with friends that stay in the same place as them or planning a New Year’s Eve party where they can celebrate together, ideas that are common when spending holidays away from the family. But as many of the people that were interviewed, most of them don’t have any plans for the holidays, besides finishing up their semester exams and all the assignments they’ve got so that they could have a little rest and peace after a stressful semester. In the end what most of this people that plan on spending their holidays alone, just want to have a good time with friends, as their families are far away from their reach.