NYC-Versary

This date crept up on me like the G Train, but it's true: I've officially lived in New York City for one full year. I've officially been a college grad for one full year. Crazy crazy crazy. To celebrate this exciting milestone, I'm paying a visit later tonight to the place where it all began: Junior's Cheesecake. But I first wanted to look back at this last year and remember all the amazing adventures I've had so far.

For example...In one year living in NYC, I've:

• Done just about all the touristy things. Top of the Rock, Statue of Liberty, High Line, Brooklyn Bridge, Coney Island...I got all of these out of the way early. 
• Eaten my weight in pizza and cheesecake and pastrami and halal
• Biked around Central Park
• Gotten lost in the Met, the American Museum of Natural History, the MOMA, and the Brooklyn Museum
• Traveled on the subway at three in the morning with two homeless men as my companions
• Fallen asleep on the subway and woken up at Brighton Beach
• Heard every rendition imaginable of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" 
• Been networked with on the subway
• Been proposed to by my taxi driver
• Been propositioned in the South Bronx
• Been to a jazz concert in Harlem
• Participated in film festivals, television festivals, and music festivals
• Seen 14 Broadway shows
  
  
• Had my name in a Playbill (off-off Broadway, but still)
• Attended the cherry blossom festival at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
• Gallery-shopped in Chelsea
• Been to a Yankees game and a Mets game
• Attended a live taping of SNL
• Gobbled up the special concrete at each Shake Shack location
• Ridden the Cyclone at Coney Island
• Experienced the weirdness that is the Village Halloween Parade
• Attended various free concerts and plays in Central Park
• Warbled my way through Korean karaoke
• Learned all the Jewish holidays in September
• Read a book in the Rose Reading Room at the Schwarzman Library
• Become best friends with the security guards at Grand Central Terminal
• Devoured all the things at Smorgasburg
• Taken a selfie with Zachary Quinto
• Taken stalker photos of countless other celebrities
• Marathoned movies at the Tribeca Film Festival
• Sat on the Iron Throne
• Learned what 100 degrees without air conditioning really feels like
• Learned what taking public transit through a polar vortex really feels like
• Lived in three different boroughs
  
• Changed my personal definitions of "expensive" and "far away" and "smelly"
• Learned how to place an order with Seamless in less than 30 seconds.
• Hardened my heart towards tourists in Times Square
• Felt inner pride when a lady asked me for directions and I knew what to tell her
• Made some incredible friendships and memories to last a lifetime

Greatest friendship of them all

That's only a small list of things I've done this past year. You can click on the "New York" tag at the bottom to see some of my other posts I wrote about my time here so far.

However, there are still so many things I want to see and do. I plan to live here for a while, and I still don't feel I can fully call myself a New Yorker, at least not until I:

• Discover more obscure, delicious restaurants to impress my visiting friends with. This includes completing the 196 Challenge (visiting one restaurant for every country in the world) 
• Knock another girl to the ground at a sample sale
• Attend an art fair at Roosevelt Island
• Get a bicycle and bike around Prospect Park
• Visit Greenwood Cemetery 
• Go to a Knicks and a Nets game
• Attend a taping of The Colbert Report before it's too late
• Play chess in Washington Square Park
• Visit the real Little Italy in the Bronx
• Kayak on the Hudson River
• Sing along at a drag show
• Bowl and jam at Brooklyn Bowl
• Find Brandon Stanton and get on Humans of New York
• Get yelled at by Billy on the Street
• Meet Amy Poehler at the UCB
• Find myself saying "Fuhgeddaboutit" unironically

Please let this happen to me.