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" As crowds flock to the opening of the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert&amp;#039;s  Eat, Pray, Love this weekend, no doubt many will be inspired to make big changes in their lives. That&amp;#039;s just what happened when Amanda Pressner and her friends Holly Corbett and Jennifer Baggett read Gilbert&amp;#039;s best-selling book. They decided to leave everything behind to follow their dream of traveling the world in 2006. In their late 20s, they bravely opted to give up their media jobs in New York City and embark on a year-long adventure around the globe.  The New Yorkers documented their experience, which began in South America and culminated in Australia, in The Lost Girls: Three Friends, Four Continents, One Unconventional Detour Around the World . Redbookmag.com asked co-author Amanda Pressner about her amazing adventure.  How did the three of you become friends and what led to your decision to take the trip? Jen and I were friends from college and I had worked with Holly at a magazine. The three of us had once gone on a vacation to Argentina together for 10 days and it was the best 10 days of our lives. We had talked about going to Central America and then figured if we were going to do that we might as well travel the world. Before we knew it, this trip in our heads was planned and we purchased our plane tickets.  You traveled to 12 countries. What was the biggest thing you learned? The twelve destinations we visited were Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Kenya, India, Dubai, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bali, New Zealand and Australia. Before the trip, I had some sense that we were lucky to be Americans \u2014 especially American women \u2014 but it never hit home in the way that it did while we were traveling and saw how other women lived. There are so many women around the world who work so hard. They are working tirelessly in a market, in a field, or in an office every day, and they take care of their kids and make dinner for their family. The trip made me realize how lucky we are to have opportunities our mothers, grandmothers and others who came before us provided for us.  Can you share a special moment from the adventure?   Jen had a childhood dream of volunteering in Kenya, so we worked with pre-teen girls at a school in Kenya called Pathfinder Academy. The school didn&amp;#039;t have an organized volunteer program in place. After speaking with the headmaster of the school, we realized there were 12 girls who lived on the grounds. They had either been raped on the way to school or had lost parents to HIV or other diseases.   These girls had nobody to look after their personal and emotional welfare and many of them were still so positive even after what they had been through. I decided to start a dance program for them. The girls loved it. Since we only spent a month there, we also wanted to leave something for them that was more lasting. We ended up writing a play called &amp;quot;A Tree Grows in Kenya&amp;quot; [Read it here] about a Kenyan woman named Wangari Maathai who received a Nobel Peace Prize for her successful tree-planting program. We felt she was a great role model for these little girls. The play has not only been performed at the Pathfinder school, but all over Kenya.  The volunteer program we worked with, Village Volunteers, also has a new initiative called The Butterfly Project that we&amp;#039;re helping out with now. The Butterfly Project helps to raise money for these girls to receive nursing degrees. It costs about $2,000 for one girl to become a nurse, but once it happens, it can help so many people.  How have you changed as a person after having gone through the experience?   I was a totally different person before I took the trip. Before I left, I worked a lot and thought it was the only way to succeed. My life is much more balanced now. I&amp;#039;m seeing that friendships, love and connections are so much more important than what ends up on your resume. I have new goals that involve self-fulfillment and being true to who I am.  What was the process of writing the book like?   We brought three different personalities to the trip and those same personalities worked out really well for the book. I was the motivator \u2014 the idea person behind writing this book in the first place. Jen was the one who set our schedules, tracked our budget and helped decide on the chapters we each would be responsible for writing. Holly was the peacemaker. When things would get tense, she was always the one to help us untangle those knots of tension.  I knew very little about writing a book when I first started. Writing magazine articles is an entirely different beast than writing a memoir. I had to start from scratch. The same structure that makes good fiction \u2014 that pacing, character descriptions, characterizing your friends through dialogue \u2014 we had to figure out intuitively.  What advice would you give to someone who&amp;#039;s interested in making a major life change and is fearful of making it happen?   Find a community to give you support so you don&amp;#039;t feel alone. Our Web site, LostGirlsWorld.com, has become a huge online community of women that were previously unaware that others just like them longed to see the world, or to chart a new course in their lives.We decided to take a major step in traveling around the world, but not everybody needs to go that big and bold to make major changes in their life.  In terms of the practical side about planning for it, start saving long before you think you might make a change, whether it&amp;#039;s taking a class, going on an adventure, or moving across the country\u2014whatever it is you choose to do. Think about the purchasing decisions you make every day.  Monique Valeris is a corporate communications professional and a freelancer who writes about everything from lifestyle topics to travel. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/money-career/a6476/the-lost-girl-co-author-amanda-pressner-interview/>