You've just finished uni; maybe you're taking a break from your stressful job, you've got some money saved, and you want to adventure and make a difference. There are children in developing countries, and you've got time and a lot of love and there's a whole world out there. But before you end up as that person on Facebook making the peace sign amid a crowd of brown orphans, stop and think. I might be…
The cockroaches crawling over the seats only marked the beginning of the twenty-plus hour hell about to commence. By the time the other students noticed the insects slowly emerging from the plush, reclining seats, it was too late to turn back. It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I was in Indonesia with a professor and about fifteen students to interview government officials and NGO leaders about development of democracy and…
The celebrity is in Africa. You know the celebrity from movies, or from being in a royal family, or from making an apology on television after saying what they really thought on television. An embedded reporter from The Toast was given exclusive access to the celebrity as he or she visited several buildings and animals throughout the region of Africa. We discussed Africa at length. Below is an edited and condensed version of this rare and…
It was in the early afternoon, when the sun was still blazing. Black birds, like the ones I read about in the arms of the canon that had come to life simply to confront me, murmured overhead. To me, they were like eagles or hawks or another variety of heroically raptorial birds. In some version of reality, they were probably small, island birds that ate slugs or coconut scraps
Nicole - EDITH, you have made a book, and I am in it! How did this come to be? Edith - Yeah! A lovely editor at Amazon got in touch a few months back about potentially putting together a Kindle Series featuring frequent Hairpin contributors, and I was like "YES!" and we thought "travel" as a topic was the way to go. And lo, here it is: An Experience Definitely Worth Allegedly Having: Travel…
