Last Saturday, I touched down in London-Town with my eyes wide, my hopes high and my fake British accent well-rehearsed and ready to go. I turned my back on the more obvious, tropical, MTV-sponsored locales for the first time and packed my bags for a sun- and body shot-free zone. Just hours into my journey, high above the Atlantic, I was certain I’d made the right choice. Although I admit this may have had something to do with the combination of sitting next to an empty seat on the plane and/or the Valium my lovely mom slipped in my carry-on, my excitement prevailed and after seven pleasant air-borne hours I approached the friendly-looking immigration officer with a skip in my step and a smile.

Officer: “Passport?” … Why of course, sir.

The ILR credit internship office lied to me — they told me that most Swiss residents could speak English and I would not have any trouble getting around. From the moment I landed in Geneva, Switzerland, I was surrounded by signs in German, Italian and French. While I do have a little background in French (okay more like seven years), I am nowhere near being fluent and one of my high school French teachers once remarked that I had the worst accent she had ever heard.

Gorges to gondolas: Foreign ­correspondent Elizabeth Manapsal (top center) is living it up in the E.U.

Edinburgh — This past weekend, I finally reached the age of 21, the all-so-important milestone of my college career. However, I have been quite indifferent about this myself. Now do not get me wrong, I enjoy a good drink; it is just that studying abroad in Scotland, I can already legally do that since the drinking age is 18.

In writing about this, I certainly was not going to compose the typical collegiate opinion piece whining about the drinking age with age-old arguments repeated in the billion prior articles. And while I recall and respect former columnist Mark Coombs’ defense of the teetotaler in “Turning Wine Into Water” (April 19, 2007), I do not fall into that category.

Hi, and welcome to my double moving party. I used to have a column in Arts, but I obviously wore down someone enough to let me move, and here I am, in my new swankified space.

It’s a double moving party, because instead of sitting in Libe Café peering over your shoulder, I am sitting on a rooftop in pitch-black night in Kathmandu, praying for my uber-elusive internet connection to work and trying to drown out the mooing cow who is obviously not a fan of my playlist.

I am in my last semester at Cornell, so perhaps it’s not surprising that I find myself missing Cornell even before I have left with my coveted degree in hand. As I stroll across the Arts Quad under the watchful eyes of Ezra Cornell and A.D. White, I am fiercely proud to call myself a Cornellian. And yet, this sense of nostalgia raises a profound question: Do we share a common conception of what it means to be a Cornellian?

Quite frankly, the more I ponder the question, the more I’m convinced that it is overly simplistic and risks missing the point. Cornell is more than the sum of its parts, and its multifaceted nature ensures that each of us has a slightly different understanding of what it means to be a Cornellian.

I’ve wanted to study abroad in Japan for some years now, and for the short time I’ve been here — about two weeks — it certainly hasn’t disappointed. It’s definitely been a place of new experiences and new friends, some of which I will never forget.

ISTANBUL — It’s Sunday morning. I’ve been sleeping for the past eleven hours and wake exactly how I feared — hurting all over. This is a product of my own doing. I’ve grown up my whole life watching football and have always had a burning desire to play. When the opportunity came along, albeit in Turkey, there was no chance I was turning it down.

My first practice started a bit shaky — “Stretch your calves, Aleks!” yelled Jokson, the burly team captain leading stretches at the center of our circle. As I repositioned my legs, the whole team went up in fits of laughter, thoroughly enjoying their leader’s elementary English. “Hello by the way,” I thought after this fine introduction, “My name is Alex, pleased to meet you!”