How to Marry a Millionaire: the Zurich Edition
After a London-style New Year’s celebration, replete with fireworks and Leicester Square shenanigans, Sharel and I ventured onto Zurich. Switzerland was my idea. From the time I was in fifth grade and read Sharon Creech’s “Bloomability,” detailing the trials and tribulations of an American girl in a Swiss boarding school, I had expended all my [...]
To England, With Love.
“Maybe I’m not in love with New York anymore.” After returning from a magical year in the City of Dreaming Spires– Oxford, England– I thought my heart had been irreparably broken. As a born and bred New Yorker, I thought there was only one place I could ever swear allegiance, the island of Manhattan.When friends [...]
Barcelona: The City of Yiddish Proverbs
My grandmother, replete with Yiddish proverbs, had left a message on my phone. The content, “Man plans, and God laughs.” As a woman of a few words, she keeps her calls simple and to the point. My flight to Barcelona had been cancelled on account of the most unexpected of reasons: an Icelandic volcano. A [...]
The Spinster Stench
After three and a half years spent in a women’s college environment, I have become subject to an unfortunate fear: spinsterhood. My grandmother reminds me on a weekly basis that a woman without a husband is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich sans peanut butter; it may be edible, but it is most certainly [...]
Dear Heathrow, You’re Lucky I Love New York
Some people survive finals period by downing excessive amounts of calories in the form of cheap baked goods and flavored caffeine shots. Others sacrifice their sanity and engage in consecutive all-nighters, in an effort to churn out the requisite number of pages for their coursework. And then there is me, the wanderlust-stricken college senior, incapable [...]
The Adlon Hotel and Lessons in Primary Child Care
Now I don’t like to talk ill of the dead, but I think we can all agree that dangling your newborn baby from a hotel window several stories above ground is a sign of weak parenting. It also, apparently, has become a tourist destination in Berlin. The infamous dangling baby suite, where Michael Jackson waved [...]
Forget the Prince, Find his Castle
Be it rain, sleet, snow, or in my case, volcanic ash, I was determined to take the journey to Portugal. I had been inspired by one of my Wellesley friends, who had remarked, “Portugal is a hidden, and relatively cheap gem that fews Americans frequent. Oh, also it has its own version of Disneyland!” Given [...]
Farewell to the City of Dreaming Spires
“Friends are the sunshine of life.”—John Hay I cheated, and nearly twenty minutes before my graduation ceremony from Oxford University was set to commence, I ripped open the contents of a farewell card from my closest British friend, Johnny. The John Hay’s quote that greeted me, despite its seemingly trite sentiment, brought me to tears. [...]
A heartbreaking work of staggering haggis.
After nearly three months in Oxford, England, I knew I was ready for a change. And– conveniently– I knew exactly where I needed to go to satiate my first bout of European wanderlust. Enlisting the companionship of fellow liberal arts student Marissa, I headed north because after all, as the weather begins to cool and [...]
Yaffa is a self-described caffeine addict. In fact, she almost never went abroad for fear of encountering a Starbucks-deprived country. After discovering the joys of European cafes, however, she quickly succumbed to her senses and embarked on a ten-month adventure through Western Europe, using Oxford, England as her base. Now a Wellesley College graduate, she is spending her every waking hour working on travel grants to take her to any country except the 19 she has already visited. And yes, Yaffa is relying on caffeine as a source of fellowship application fuel. You can follow her through the mind-numbing travel grant process at: http://thegreenstraw.wordpress.com.