By Daniela Mercades, Contributing Writer
Surrounding ourselves with family and friends is important for happiness and overall wellbeing. But during summer, friends take different paths—some of them travel to other cities to stay with family, some prefer to work or travel, and some are international students and even fly to another country.
Keeping in touch can feel challenging, if not downright impossible at times. For some of us, it is hard to make plans with friends to go out over summer because everyone is focused on their own lives.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways you can still hear, see, and speak to those near and dear to you, even when they’re not physically close. Many apps have arisen during quarantine to make it easier to stay connected. Some of them have online games to have fun while we are separated from each other.
According to Maria Sanchez, a freshman majoring in business management, some awesome apps to play online are “Among Us” and “Ludo.” Both can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play Store.
“Among Us” is basically a game of survival, where players have to vote off all of the imposters and complete all the tasks, before the imposter has a chance to kill all of the crewmates and stop them from completing the designated tasks to win.
“Ludo” is an online strategy board game for two to four players, in which the players race their four tokens from start to finish according to the rolls of a single die.
Another amazing online game is “Trivia Crack,” which lets you test your knowledge and challenge your friends to see who is the smartest. The game’s objective is to obtain all six characters on the wheel. Each character represents one of the question categories: Art, Science, Sports, Entertainment, Geography, and History. The first player to obtain all six characters will be the winner of the game.
Rene Serrano, a freshman majoring in business administration, explains that one of his favorite ways to stay connected with his friends is playing video games. He plays GTA, Call of Duty, and Six Siege. The three games allow players to be part of one of two teams locked in combat with each other. He says games are awesome ways to hang out while distanced, because while friends are playing they can use a voice call to talk about the game, but also about their lives.
Furthermore, there are apps to stay in touch and spend some time talking with our friends. Sanchez says she uses the apps FaceTime, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Instagram to chat.
Apart from these ones, Annabella Serrano—a junior majoring in marketing—recommends using Zoom and Discord. Via Zoom, many people can participate in the video call. Discord lets friends communicate directly via voice, video, or text, and allows users to join servers where larger communities can interact together. Gaming is definitely Discord’s focus: it has fun and entertaining games to compete with friends.
Sanchez intends to stay on campus over summer break, while Serrano is staying in Tampa with her family. Both of them are planning to hang out with their friends a few times during the break. Sanchez explains that she is planning to go to Orlando, and Serrano prefers to go camping at the beach. They are still in touch with some friends that are staying close to them, so they can make plans together.
Thierry Edouard is an international student majoring in accounting who plans to stay in the United States and get a job. He plans to rent an apartment with other international students from Saint Leo University, so he will have physical company.
However, he also has friends who will be going back home; since he does not prefer voice or video calls, Edouard plans to text his friends using WhatsApp and Snapchat. Edouard also plans to play Xbox and PlayStation with his friends in his apartment and invite other friends to play with them remotely.
While there are many ways to stay in touch with our friends, the most important part is to have the initiative to contact them. Friends are a great support and make our lives funnier and easier—we should be thankful for them and keep an eye on what they are doing in their lives.
If we aren’t staying too far from our friends over summer break, we should try to go out to some safe place that meets the COVID-19 guidelines to help maintain the relationship. Whichever way we can contact them, the most important thing is to do so and not lose contact.
