How Not To Get Laid While Studying Abroad

Drink too much. Slurp down seven shots of local liquor and stumble around, shouting what few words you know (or think you know) in the native language of the place you’re studying. Contrary to what the frat guys back home told you, many cultures don’t like watching you spew vomit across the floor of their favourite nightspot, no matter how cute you are. If you never want to get laid while studying abroad, be that sloppy foreigner who has yet to acclimate to the mores of your host country’s drinking culture.

Alternatively, don’t drink at all. Show up to the bar or party as the one sober person who seems disgusted by the inebriated behaviour of everyone around them. Get offended when someone, be it a local or another study abroad student, offers to buy you a drink. Judge people and make cultural assumptions (“Russians can’t function without vodka” or “it’s annoying how much the Irish revere Guinness”). Fail to understand why anyone would need a ‘substance’ to enjoy themselves, and then wonder why you always shuffle back to your dorm, horny and alone.

Be engrossed in your program. It’s great that you want to devote your entire semester abroad in London to those Elizabethan Literature classes, but you’re probably not going to have a lot of sex if all you do is study. Academic success is important, but so is banging that gorgeous Dutchman eyeing you at the opposite end of the coffeehouse. If you love Kafka so much that you’re secretly pretending to have an affair with him, it’s time to put down the books and walk around Prague in search of a one-night stand.

Hit on the locals. Not in an, “I’d love to get to know you, Monsieur Barielles, by having a discussion with you, a few drinks, maybe cross-culturally comparing our lifestyles, etc. Then go back to your flat and bang” way. More like slurring “HEY THERE FRENCHIE, WANNA SCREW?” in a loud, inebriated way (i.e., first paragraph). Desperately beg the locals to sleep with you in an attempt to earn bragging rights within your study abroad program — “Yeah, I’ve had sex with an Australian girl, no big deal.” Slowly discover that, in a lot of countries, coming on to people like that is pretty disrespectful.

Pretend you’re on The Amazing Race. Cram 11 countries into a 12-day trip and become so exhausted you fall asleep in your hostel by 9pm every night. Is visiting every attraction in Buenos Aires an impressive feat? Of course. Will it impress someone so much that their only reaction is to ‘do’ you? I guess being super busy is a turn-on for some, sure. But it’s really hard to have sex with someone whose study abroad itinerary is so jam-packed, they literally don’t have time to fuck.

Have a boyfriend or girlfriend in your home country. Skype them every day, sometimes twice a day. Pretend like living in a foreign country for an extended period of time is no big deal and that you can totally live without sex for four months. Talk about your boyfriend / girlfriend like, all of the time, to everyone — other students, teachers, perfect strangers. Make it seem like they’re coming to visit you, even though they’re definitely too poor to afford a plane ticket to Shanghai (really, though, they’re tired of living vicariously through you and jealous their lives are not as cool as yours right now).

Masturbate. All the time. Self-explanatory.