Four years ago I sat at this very desk in room 1069 filling out forms for Cornell housing. Once again I am scrambling to email professors (and in this case my editor) work from my balcony overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem, squinting from the blinding glint off of the Dome of the Rock. With the rest of my family is sitting at the pool I am left alone to reflect how much this city and I have changed since I spent the year studying here.

With graduation looming I have begun to grasp onto anything Cornell-related as tightly as possible. I have already activated my Cornell Club membership, stopping in after a recent bus trip for happy hour. Several of my friends and professors have noted that this semester I have been treating Cornell as a New York City commuter school, regularly setting up the back table of the Campus-to-Campus bus as my personal office.

A Sun columnist travels through the looking glass to the grim streets of New Orleans’ still-reeling Lower Ninth Ward.

I landed in a city of palm trees, tired and disheveled, barely able to carry my bags, until I found a nice Egyptian cabdriver to come to my rescue.

If you ever thought I was cool, stop reading right now.

A few days after I returned from London last spring my mother placed a newspaper clipping on my desk. It was well intentioned, but it was a big mistake. She had given me Nora Ephron’s May 13 “Addicted to L-U-V” column from The New York Times. Those who know me know I am by no means addicted to love or romantic in any way but I am addicted — highly, highly addicted — to Scrabble.

319 College Ave. has always held a special place in my heart. Three years ago when I was a freshman it was The Bear Lodge. For the young’uns reading this, back then it was an under-populated bar — overpopulated with minors — that happily hosted bar-tabs and charity events. With older locals and an extensive list of beers on tap, its vibe was somewhere between The Nines and Ruloffs.

New York City’s newest trend is … Ithaca?! You heard me correctly. NYC, the pinnacle of high fashion and high art and hot nightlife under the High Line has now turned to Ithaca for high doses of caffeine.

My sources (dailycandy.com) tell me that Gimme! Coffee, Ithaca’s beloved espresso bar, is taking the City by storm. About five years ago, Gimme! launched an Ithaca-style espresso bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The branch has since been wildly successful, drawing rave reviews from The New York Times, Food & Wine, New York Magazine and various Cornell alumni. Just three days ago, another Gimme! opened its doors, this time brewing its famous blends for the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan (Nolita is a rough amalgam of North of Little Italy).

My Peter Pan complex was in full force this winter break. As a senior I am in complete denial that many of my peers are already yuppies. While I was home in the city I tried very much in vain to convince my friends to only frequent college hangouts. In the past I relished the change of scenery from C-town’s J.O.’s and the Palms. Tired of the Meatpacking District, I spent a considerable amount of time in Columbia’s Morningside Heights and NYU’s Greenwich Village. Surprisingly, it took until this semester break for me to start looking at New York City as a college town. The recognition of a large urban area as a potential melting pot of higher learning led me to consider Ithaca as a college town, too.