The Lost Girls World

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bio pix

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HTML Code Cheat Sheet

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TO CREATE A DROP DOWN MENU WITH A "GO" BUTTON
(JAVA SCRIPT MUST BE TURNED ON)

TO CREATE ROTATING TEXT

HTML Code Cheat Sheet

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TO CREATE A DROP DOWN MENU WITH A "GO" BUTTON
(JAVA SCRIPT MUST BE TURNED ON)

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Trip Planning: How We...

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Chose a Route Believe it or not, this was actually one of the most effortless parts of our travel planning. The Lost Girls agreed that if we had any hopes of making it around the globe before going broke, we'd have to select countries where we could survive on little more than a greenback and smile.

Packed for a Year Forget roomy suitcases and oversized carry-on baggage: Every we'd need to survive for the next 365 days, including clothes, shoes, toiletries, medical supplies, hiking gear, guidebooks, cameras and yes, our computer, needed to be crammed into a backpack not much larger than the average six-pack cooler.

Stayed Safe on the Road While living in New York City practically qualifies as self-defense education, we knew that the bob-and-weave maneuvers we'd learned at designer sample sales wouldn't help us much on the road. So, we found better ways to protect ourselves—without resorting to kung fu.

Gave Notice at Work Cold sweats. Bad dreams. Few things inspired as much panic than the idea of walking into our boss' office and quitting our dream jobs.

Left Our Loved Ones Saying farewell to friends, family-and the wonderful men in their lives-proved to be our greatest challenge.

Kept in Touch Since our cell phones barely work in the States-let alone the Amazon-we had to find creative ways to babble on and on and on...and on... So, we set up a Skype account and started this website.

Stayed Cute and Fit Not that we're higmaintenancece (goodness no!) but it does take a tiny bit of work—and the right products—to keep The Lost Girls looking fabulous. Here's how the magic happens...

Holly, Jen & Amanda

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Amanda got bitten by the travel bug at age nine, when she traveled with her family around the United States in a van nicknamed "The Blue Moose."

Holly has already lapped the globe once by boat, but can't wait to take a new route by land with her best friends.

Jen has been dreaming of Africa since she watched The Flame Trees of Thika on PBS as a little girl. Since then, her longing for exotic lands has expanded to include South America at Southeast Asia.

Contact Us

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We may be thousands of miles away, but we're never far from reach. Drop us a line at contact@lostgirls.com, or reach us individually at one of the accounts below. If you are a literary agent or a member of the press, please click here for additional contact information.

Email Holly

Email Amanda

Email Jen

What Lies Ahead

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Random Pix

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Our Supporters

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The following companies have supported The Lost Girls with goods or services

Adventure Racers ($100-$500)
Robert and Nadine Pressner	Bruce and April Baggett
Maureen Pressner and Bruce Kirk	Bruce and April Baggett

Weekend Warriors
($50 - $100)

• Evelyn Rubin

Day Trippers
($20 - $50)

• Stephanie Davis

Armchair Travelers

• Sara Corbett

Sponsorships
The journey of 30,000 miles may begin with a single step, but we couldn't complete it without your help. Here are three ways to keep The Lost Girls climbing, trekking and moving forward.

To donate online

You can make a secure contribution by credit or debit card by clicking here.

To send a check
Please make checks payable to The Lost Girls. Include it in an envelope with a note bearing your name, email address and phone number and mail it to:

The Lost Girls
c/o Robert Pressner
13601 Twin Lakes Lane
Tampa, FL 33618-8421

You'll receive a confirmation of your donation by email or phone within 24 hours of receipt.

Under Development

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This page is under development

Press and Media Section

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Want to write a story about The Lost Girls?
Please contact our press representative at:
Melissa Braverman
Email: mbraver449@aol.com
W: (212) 868-1900 x254
C: (917) 621-7706
Or contact us directly at:
Email: contact@lostgirlsworld.com
Phone: (646) 221-4272

Want us to write for your publication?

Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner are both experienced national magazine and newspaper journalists. Check out our clips by clicking on the buttons below, then drop us a line to discuss assignments.

Our Route

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Boarding planes, trains, buses, boats and chicken trucks, we'll attempt to circumnavigate the globe, a yearlong journey that will cross five continents and more than a dozen countries. The following is the route we intend to follow, but as Lost Girls, we reserve the right to misplace the map, get turned around and of course, change our minds.

Our first stop....Peru, homeland of Incas, Andes and Pisco Sours. Jen's always had a secret desire to pet a llama (unfortunately, they're known to be spitters) and Holly and Amanda are looking foward to chewing on cocoa leaves to "ward off altitude sickness." Yah. One of our first stops is Cuzco, where we'll prep for our four-day long trek up the Inca Trail. After a near disasterous tumble off a cliff in Cinque Terre, we've have instituted our own hiker's rule of thumb: When climbing a mountain, you can gawk at the sweeping vistas or you can amble along the narrow trail, but you probably shouldn't do both that the same time. Just a thought.

Our first stop....Peru, homeland of Incas, Andes and Pisco Sours. Jen's always had a secret desire to pet a llama (unfortunately, they're known to be spitters) and Holly and Amanda are looking foward to chewing on cocoa leaves to "ward off altitude sickness." Yah. One of our first stops is Cuzco, where we'll prep for our four-day long trek up the Inca Trail. After a near disasterous tumble off a cliff in Cinque Terre, we've have instituted our own hiker's rule of thumb: When climbing a mountain, you can gawk at the sweeping vistas or you can amble along the narrow trail, but you probably shouldn't do both that the same time. Just a thought.

Our first stop....Peru, homeland of Incas, Andes and Pisco Sours. Jen's always had a secret desire to pet a llama (unfortunately, they're known to be spitters) and Holly and Amanda are looking foward to chewing on cocoa leaves to "ward off altitude sickness." Yah. One of our first stops is Cuzco, where we'll prep for our four-day long trek up the Inca Trail. After a near disasterous tumble off a cliff in Cinque Terre, we've have instituted our own hiker's rule of thumb: When climbing a mountain, you can gawk at the sweeping vistas or you can amble along the narrow trail, but you probably shouldn't do both that the same time. Just a thought.

Our first stop....Peru, homeland of Incas, Andes and Pisco Sours. Jen's always had a secret desire to pet a llama (unfortunately, they're known to be spitters) and Holly and Amanda are looking foward to chewing on cocoa leaves to "ward off altitude sickness." Yah. One of our first stops is Cuzco, where we'll prep for our four-day long trek up the Inca Trail. After a near disasterous tumble off a cliff in Cinque Terre, we've have instituted our own hiker's rule of thumb: When climbing a mountain, you can gawk at the sweeping vistas or you can amble along the narrow trail, but you probably shouldn't do both that the same time. Just a thought.

20 Reasons We Took Off

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Since we've started planning this round-the-world journey, we keep getting the same question: Why? We couldn't come up with one good reason—so we came up with twenty. In no particular order, here are our ulterior motives for going nomad:

1. We'd rather wake up to the roar of the Amazon River than the screeching of an alarm clock.

2. Because fending off a drunken pervert in Central Park hardly constitutes as communing with the locals.

3. Hiking the subway stairs: 14 calories burned. Trekking the Inca Trail: 14,000.

4. We want to ban the phrases "in the loop," "per our conversation," and "out of the box" from our daily vocabulary.

5. Aussie's have walkabouts and Brit's take a gap year; isn't it time for Americans to break out their passports and get moving?

6. We'd rather get tan lines from lounging on the beach than worry lines from tackling endless to-do lists.

7. Have you ever seen a fat backpacker?

8. The real Wonders of the World can't be found on any map.

9. Gazing longingly at your "exotic locales" screensaver hardly compares to watching the sunset over the Serengeti or diving with the wildlife along The Great Barrier Reef.

10. The world is filled with yummy desserts just screaming for a taste test.

11. Because after six years of plugging into cell phones, blackberries and PDAs, we'd rather connect face-to-face with real people.

12. The phrases "burnout," "multi-tasking" and "quarter-life crisis" don't exist in most languages.

13. Natural disasters, poverty and illness have left billions in need worldwide. We want to lend three pairs of helping hands.

14. In 90 percent of the countries in the world, wine is cheaper than water.

15. Siestas. 'Nuf said.

16. The cost of a Starbuck's latte in the Big Apple will cover a week's lodging in Laos.

17. 'Cause we're suckers for guys with accents.

18. Cramming everything into a single backpack is the fastest way to simplify our lives.

19. As individuals, traveling is our greatest passion. Now that we've found our fellow Lost Girls, we'll never have to go it alone.

20. Sometimes you have to get lost in order to be found.

Our Story

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It was in New York City, dead-of-winter 2004, when we—Amanda, Jen and Holly—found ourselves in the midst of a collective quarter life crisis. Sure, 20-something burnout may sound a tad to silly to anyone born before the advent of MTV, Atari or Guess jeans, but seven-day workweeks at stress-driven offices had taken their toll. Despite having creative gigs that fueled our passions, we were exhausted and frustrated that our careers had become our identities. Constantly linked to work via cell, text, blackberry and e-mail, we were starving for real connections with family, friends and significant others (who wants to date a woman already married to her job?).

It turns out, we weren't alone. Like millions of young women in our generation, we were plagued with doubts and fears about the paths we were choosing. Though 12-hour workdays left us little time for contemplation, we couldn’t quiet that inner voice asking: What exactly were we doing with our lives? Could we ultimately commit to one career, city and lifestyle (and man), when so many opportunities lie before us? On our own, with no parents, advisers or a syllabus to guide us, you could say that we were a little, well, Lost. Okay, very Lost. So before making the ultimate choice of which way to go as (gulp) adults, we decided to take a major detour, one we hoped might provide a little insight into these questions and just maybe, a road- map to our futures.

Kissing our jobs, boyfriends, apartments, families and our beloved Manhattan goodbye, we officially became "The Lost Girls," and started making plans for a yearlong, 35,000-mile journey around the globe. Loosely building an itinerary that begins in South America and crawls eastward through Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and Australia, we plan to explore the cultures, mindsets and lifestyles of our international counterparts, getting to know thousands of strangers so we may better know ourselves.

We have no idea what the next year will hold—or where the future will lead us—but we can't wait to start the journey. The Lost Girls' trip kicks off on June 20, 2006. We hope that you'll stick with us every step of the way.

New York Photo Shoot

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Title Slide

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