Kids have Christmas. Lovers have Valentine’s Day. Presidents have President’s day. What do we, the college students of the world, have?

St. Patrick’s day! Woooohooo!!

Only 4 more days until our favorite holiday of the year! Friends! Drinking Games! Kegs and eggs! A full day of debauchery! (Note: different from normal college weekends by the addition of green clothing.) The combination of costumes, Irish music, bar specials and friends makes this the best day of the year. And we won’t let anyone or anything take it away from us.

The CollegeCandy writers weighed in this week on their worst St. Patrick’s day nightmares, real or imagined. We tried to have them tell us their favorite memories, but most people can’t remember St. Patty’s Days of the past for some reason. Weird.

Cristina – Michigan State University: An exam, a paper, and getting caught in the rain with my Uggs (oh it’s happened before).

Lauren – University of Michigan: That one year I had to give a presentation. At 4pm. Too bad the DQ Blizzard and bottle of Powerade I got on the way to class did nothing to combat the 4 Irish Car Bombs I’d had….for breakfast.

Brithny – Duke : One time my friend tried to dye her hair with green jello. She went a little overboard, and accidently turned her forehead and ears green too! Looking like a leprechaun… definitely a nightmare.

Sara C – Fordham: Last year on St. Patrick’s Day I was in Israel, where none of the bartenders I encountered had ever heard of the holiday, much less had any green beer on tap. For real.

Charlsie – Hollins: I hooked up with an Irish Exchange student whom I thought had blonde hair and blue eyes, but he looked quite different as the alcohol wore off. Ugh.

Kiki – University of Missouri: I went to a Catholic high school, plaid skirts and everything, and freshman year I thought it would be really cute to wear my forest green polo shirt with shamrock print knee socks from Target’s dollar section. Not a good look for anyone.

K – GWU: Does the morning after St. Patty’s day festivities count? Throwing up all morning…at work…was probably the worst 6 hours of my entire life. Not sure how I still have that job!

Elizabeth – UC Berkeley: Two years ago, my Mom called me on St. Patrick’s Day to tell me that my dog was dying.  I was definitelyyyy plastered and making a scene in the middle of a beer pong tournament…

Alex- Lakehead: I’ve never experienced anything embarassing (by some miracle), but last year we had to call my friend’s ex-boyfriend to pick us up and she ended up puking blueberry vodka all over his car’s interior. You really can’t even imagine what it smells like until you’ve experienced it first hand. But at least we had cute outfits!

Noa – CU Boulder: I spent 45 minutes flirting with a guy last year on St. Pats. I thought it was going well until I went to the bathroom and discovered my kelly green teeth. They were neon! I came back and the guy was gone. Awesome.

Sarabeth – University of Texas: I’m from an Irish family and forgot to wear green one year. They take the pinching thing a bit too far.

S.E. – Fordham: My worst St. Patty’s Day nightmare would be having an exam the day after. Everyone knows you need to drink on St. Patty’s Day, but it’s just so hard to do this if you’re worrying about a test. WTF, school!?

Want the deets? Read on, my friend.

If there is one thing we at CollegeCandy miss most about actually being in college it’s Welcome Week. (And our parents footing the bills.) 7 full days of debauchery, warm weather and nothing else to do makes for one pretty awesome time.

Want to stay up all night playing Kings and eating Doritos? Go ahead!

Want to pack up the car and take a trip to the beach for the day? Why not?

Want to fill a pool with Jell-O and wrestle around in it while your friends watch and cheer you on? You got nothin’ else goin on..

Sigh.

We want to do those things too, but unfortunately we have to go to “work” and “be adults.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t live vicariously through you lucky ladies (and give away a sweet prize at the same time!). So, we are having a contest.

Send us your best/funniest/most hilarious/ridiculous photos from Welcome Week. (Yeah, including that one of you climbing the school’s famed fountain in your dress.) We will pick our favorites, post ‘em to the site and have the readers vote on which one is the best. If you or your friends don’t wanna see your faces on the interwebs, feel free to block em out. We don’t care; we just wanna pretend like we are right there with you.

If your picture is chosen, you will win a free iHome.

Free.

Sent to you.

To use for those awesome pre-party dance parties. Or to muffle out the sounds of your roommate doing the naughty, naughty.

All entries should be sent to editor@collegecandy.com and must be received by Friday, September 5th at 1:00 PM. We will post our favorites the following Monday and voting will last until Friday, September 12th. Tell your friends. Tell their friends. Just don’t tell your family.

We will announce the winner on the site (picture and all) on Monday, September 15th, at which point we will send your tubular (we are trying to bring that word back) iHome to you.

So chug that beer, grab that camera and enjoy Welcome Week (for us!).

This week’s episode, unfortunately but expectedly, was lacking in Vegas. It was chock full of boring-ness though. I got the feeling that the producers wanted to spruce up the season, and added some filler episodes before the big climax. This episode was Baby’s Breath to the bouquet of Living Lohan.

Basically, no one wants to go to Vegas with Ali and Dina. Dina tries to coax excitement out of Cody. She ruthlessly wants to uproot her only responsible child from his busy social life and sports schedule to go party in Las Vegas. She tries bribing Cody with Niketown swag. She tells him of all the fun he’ll have. She finally realizes that he is eleven and she has the upper hand. Cody’s going to Vegas whether he likes it or not.

Nana’s compliance, on the other hand…not so easy to come by. Nana does NOT want to go. She says she has her house and “issues” to take care of. Dina feels that Nana may just be afraid to travel and live her life after the death of her husband of 50 years.

We are introduced to Uncle Paul, who Dina believes can convince Nana to go to Vegas with the family while Ali records her album. Uncle Paul would like to respect Nana’s wishes and offers myriad reasons why it would be Okay for her to stay at home, and he would take care of her. Dina, however, will stop at nothing short of stuffing Nana into a burlap sack to get her to LV.

Dina and Paul corner Nana in the kitchen to try to swindle her into going to Vegas. Dina tries the “You’re so old you forgot that you already agreed to go!” approach. Uncle Paul goes for the “I’m a giant Pansy” tactic and tells Nana that–shocker– it’s up to her if she’d like to go to Vegas. Strike Two on the Nana front.

Michael and Dina go for a stroll around the grounds for a heart to heart. Dina again brings up the point that Nana must come to Vegas with them, even though Nan has refused. Michael’s all depressed because he was an asshat to Nina, his girlfriend (who I have just realized has a creepy-similar name to his mother…Electra complex much?)

Cody and Ali are also disturbed by the turbulence between the couple. They hatch an adorable plan to get Nina and Michael back together (if they even broke up). I’m guessing it’s Ali’s half assed attempt at re-creating Lindsay’s Parent Trap roles.

They call Nina and tell her to head on over to the Lohan estate to work things out with Michael. The youngest Lohans know the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach, and prepare their take on a gourmet meal (toast, candles, disgusting chicken and babypoop colored green beans. Mmm!) They get the couple downstairs to hash out their issues over dins.

The best thing Mike Jr. comes up with is “Thanks for comin’ back.” He drones on about spending more time with his family and she concedes that she should hang out with them more too, her own family be damned. I just hope that’s cranberry juice they’re sipping from their stemware…given the family’s history with underage drinking.

They resolve their issues or whatever, and Michael is thankful to Cody and Ali for helping him out. He’s already explained to Cody that it’s important for him to support Ali in her career, because someday she’ll be there for him, and the Lohan’s look out for each other. That speech was actually adorable, it’s just too bad Dina still doesn’t realize that she needs to support another family member’s choice right now.

The next day, Dina tries, yet again, to get Nana on board for Vegas. Nana brings up her husband, and admits that she hasn’t been the same since he’s died. It’s hard for her to live life on her own, but she has strong ties to the home they created together, and Dina FINALLY realizes that she’s being completely selfish by trying to convince her mother to go somewhere she doesn’t want to be.

When this painfully dull episode comes to a close, the fam sees Mike off as he drives back to school in his…forest green station wagon (even the CARS are boring this week, come on!) To spice things up, Ali is wearing bunny ears. I can’t tell is this is supposed to be ironic or subliminally meaningful. Perhaps she’s just getting in the spirit for…

Next Week:

THEY FREAKING FINALLY GO TO VEGAS GODDAMMIT!

Ali celebrates her 25 15 birthday and whines about recording in Vegas. At the Palms. With the Maloufs. Hmm…

I wasn’t planning on watching last night’s debut, but as with an awful car accident, once I stumbled onto it, I couldn’t turn away. I mean, the four girls are all incredibly hot.

There’s KellyAnne, a wild child from Texas who loves to party and admittedly loves to flirt with every boy in sight. There’s Tricia, from California, who lends an aura of superiority to everything she does. There’s Parisa, the show’s first ever Muslim, whom I guess producers felt would create enough drama that she’s ostensibly replaced both the show’s token African-American as well as the show’s token homosexual, and my personal favorite, Shauvon, a buxom beauty likewise from Cali who writes her own sex column at Sacramento State University and who may have the biggest set of breasts in the history of the Real World.

The show does have guys as well, including, for a change, TWO guys from my neck of the woods in the deep south. There’s Dunbar from Mississippi, the all-American southerner, and Cohutta, from bumblefuck Georgia, who easily has one of the great names I’ve ever heard. Rounding out the cast is Isaac, a tough guy from Cleveland, who seemed to lack any personality whatsoever but wasted no time in schtupping Shauvon in the confessional room. I’d also like to point out that Isaac is apparently carrying around a 4.0 GPA at the University of Arizona, a feat once thought to be wholly impossible.

It was immediately obvious that this season will focus almost entirely on the four girls and the drama that unfolds between them. Don’t believe me? Within the first ten minutes of the episode Tricia and Kelly Anne felt that Parisa wasn’t friendly enough upon her arrival and, therefore, decided that Parisa would be their enemy for the duration of their stay in Sydney.

Very mature. And it only went downhill from there.

Parisa made waves of her own when she decided on the second morning in the house that she was already fed up with KellyAnne’s drinking habits and stated to Shauvon that she wasn’t in Australia to be KellyAnne’s babysitter. Sure, KellyAnne was waaaasted, but isn’t that what the Real World’s all about? Is it possible that Parisa’s never seen an episode before? These people don’t need babysitters… paid memberships in AA perhaps, but not babysitters.

Later, Tricia confronted Parisa about cleaning the kitchen with one of the more passive-aggressive rants I’ve ever come across. Believe you me, there’s little in life that’s more entertaining that trying to watch girls who are complete opposites co-exist under one roof.

But where I really lost it was during another of Tricia’s rants. She and KellyAnne went to a McDonald’s, where apparently Tricia had a fairly hard time understanding the cashier’s English. By her own admission, she paid for a McFlurry, and then proceeded to freak out on the cashier. She told the cashier to use the money to pay for some “f&@king English lessons,” and then stormed out.

Forgetting the fact that it was one of the more prejudiced rants of all time, you can imagine how much this tale must have endeared Tricia to Parisa, the daughter of two immigrants.

Needless to say, the tension amongst the fine females is already palpable just one episode in. Will I continue to watch? The season previews really didn’t look all that exciting, so I guess that remains to be seen. But if you’re the kind of girl that gets off on watching other girls duke it out for 30 minutes at a time, this season’s version of the Real World is definitely for you!