How to make friends in a Hostel

A hostel is one of the places where it’s the hardest to make friends with even if you’re a friendly person in general. However, that in no way means that you can’t make any friends in hostels. In fact, you just have to keep in mind a few things and you can make friends as easily as in anywhere else!

I recently traveled to San Francisco for a trade show for my www.coverglasscal.com and i have the blessing to stay in a hostel and here are the main things that you might want to pay attention to might be summed up as follows:

1. Being Friendly: Be friendly to people. If you go around appearing too busy or someone who doesn’t like to socialize, people might not always come up and socialize with you in a hostel. But if you’re friendly and sociable, that makes it a lot easier for both them and you.
2. Keep up the Conversations: One of the main things that I learned the hard way is that dying in the middle of a conversation is one of the worst things you can do. You must learn to keep up conversations even if it’s hard, that makes you a lot more sociable.
3. Find common points: There are several things to talk about- so don’t be hesitant to explore until you find something that you all have in common. In that way, it becomes really easy to hold a great conversation and to make new friends. Remember that people with same interests tend to stick together as well!
4. Don’t be too prying: There are always some people who take some time to open up or don’t open up too much at all. That’s okay- learn to accept that and don’t try to force them. If you try to force people, that just sets you apart from them instead of bringing you closer, so that’s something you must always refrain from doing.
5. Share experiences: If you have spectacular experiences to share, that makes it all the easier. Make yourself familiar to them so that they can relate and feel interested in talking to you. If you make yourself appear as a strange and mysterious person, then you might see that people are having a comparatively harder time socializing with you at the hostel.

Tips on Surviving Long Flights

In this era of airplane communication, one of the hardest parts is the wait- both at the airport and during the flight. However, when we consider longer flights, the wait at the airport seems less of a hassle than the duration of the actual flight which takes quite a few hours.

Naturally, boredom during this time is inevitable. In fact, you just start to question yourself whether you’re actually on a ship or an airplane. However, here are some tips that might just help you survive this ordeal and hassle of long flights:

1. Do something you love to do: Do something that you love to do, that’s the best way to spend a long duration of time without feeling it. This depends perfectly on the individual and may range from anything all the way from movies and gaming up to reading or even sleeping! But thing is, as long as you do something that you love to do, it’s bound to make time fly, or at least a part of it. For the next part, you might heed my next advice!
2. Sleeping: As long as your favorite thing to do isn’t sleeping, this option is still open to you. Sleeping is a great idea because it both helps you pass the time as well as energizes you. A long flight is bound to drain you of your energy despite doing nothing. And sleeping is good way to reach your destination while feeling refreshed.
3. Do some research about your destination: If you’ve already slept or plan to sleep later, the best idea is to do some research about your destination. This always comes in handy and is one of the best things to do that’s bound to save you time later on during the trip.

Check out this awesome video I found on YouTube for some more great tips!

Facts to Note before Traveling To Kisumu, Kenya

Kisumu City lies on the shores of Lake Victoria, which is in the western side of Kenya. Kisumu is beautiful enough and is worth your vacation with family or friends. There are lots of activities you can immerse yourself in while visiting Kisumu. You can enjoy boat rides, visit the museum and parks to see the wildlife, or party in one of the resorts. Imperial Hotel along Jomo Kenyatta Highway is one magnificent hotel you may love to stay at.

But first you need to learn the major facts about this city:

Kisumu Is Much Accessible

Unlike some towns in Kenya, you can access Kisumu by several options. You can travel from Mombasa all the way to Kisumu by road. The roads in Kenya used to be in pathetic conditions but the new governments have over the years prioritized on the infrastructure and so a journey to Kisumu from Mombasa or Nairobi is a smooth ride.

You can also travel to Kisumu by train from Mombasa or Nairobi. The trains are cheaper and run on schedule. The ongoing construction of the Standard Gauge Railway, once completed, will make a train travel to Kisumu even more rewarding.

You can also get to Kisumu city by air. Kisumu International Airport is less than 10 minutes from the town’s Central Business District. Well, nobody will tell you this but if you are travelling from Uganda or Tanzania, you can also access Kisumu by water.

The White Settlers Thought Kisumu Was Poisonous

When the white colonialists, in the beginning of 1900s, learned that the word ‘sumu’ means poison in Swahili, they automatically assumed Kisumu town is poisonous and set out to find out why or how. Unknown to them, ‘sumu’ may mean poison in Swahili, but in the dialect of the local tribe of Kisumu, it means ‘aid’. When the town was just picking up, the locals would come from the rural areas to seek assistance from their relatives staying in the town. So anyone traveling to Kisumu would be heard saying, “I am going to seek aid from so and so.”

Such assistance was especially necessary at times of drought when the villages had no farm produce to sustain the families. Kisumu, by then a mere center through which the Kenya-Uganda railway passed, had plenty of grains brought in by traders.

In fact the word ‘sumu’ in its original form is ‘suma’ which means ‘grain assistance/aid’ at times of famine. Over time, the assistance included not just grains but also the money the white-man had introduced. As you can see, poison is the last thing these locals had in mind while naming this town Kisumu.

However, before the misunderstanding could be sorted out, Kisumu was for a long time named Port Florence after the wife of the engineer who built the Kenya-Uganda railway. The name reverted back to Kisumu once the issue of poison was sorted.

Lake Victoria is Prestigious

The mention of Lake Victoria may not ring a bell to you, unless it is pointed out that it is the source of River Nile, which is the longest river in the world. Lake Victoria itself is the largest tropical lake in the world and the largest by surface area in Africa. Visiting Kisumu city takes you straight to this lake. In fact from the town you can once in a while be able to catch glimpses of the lake glimmering under the sun.