By: Frenchy Truitt ’17

Monique Ostbye ’18 has had her fair share of international experience. This year, she is studying abroad in Catalonia, Spain, but this isn’t her first time living overseas. During sixth and seventh grade, Ostbye lived in Limassol, Cyprus for her father’s job, and then moved back to Westport.
While living in Cyprus, Ostbye spoke English but was introduced to Greek and French in school. Despite this, she chose to pursue fluency in other languages. Ostbye is now trilingual in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Her mother is Brazilian, so she speaks Portuguese and English at home, but she learned Spanish entirely through classes at school. Ostbye continues to try to learn more languages with Catalan being the next on her list, which the locals speak in the area of Spain that she is currently living and studying in.
“In the beginning it was hard to understand since it’s what most people speak between each other, but after the first 2-3 months I got the hang of it, and now I understand the majority,” Ostbye said.
Currently, Ostbye is spending a full year in Spain through the Rotary Youth Exchange (RYC) program “because [she] wanted to learn a new language and expose [herself] to a totally new way of living,” she said. However, Ostbye did not explicitly choose to be placed in Spain. The RYC program asks students to submit a list of their top five country choices, and from that list the program decides where to place the students. Ostbye’s first choice was Norway, but she was still incredibly excited to be put in Spain because, “I think I knew deep down that Spain was the best placement for me,” she said.
Ostbye’s favorite part of studying abroad are the “little things, like my host parents driving me to school or eating lunch at my host grandma’s house. The stuff that makes me feel like I’ve lived there forever,” Ostbye said. “My most favorite specific moments would probably be going to my host family’s family reunions because all my host aunts, uncles and cousins are so caring and treat me like one of the family.”
But not all of Ostbye’s experiences abroad have been so pleasant. Ostbye’s time in Cyprus during middle school came with its difficulties, and she was bullied due to her American nationality.
“I heard everything from ‘fat American,’ to being shoved into lockers, to people yelling McDonald’s at me in the halls,” Ostbye said. “Teachers made fun of the [U.S.] government in class, which would give the class permission to call me the ‘dumb American.’”
But despite the bullying, Ostbye’s experience abroad proved to be beneficial in a various ways.
“Those two years were the most definitive years of my life, and they honestly made me into the person I am today,” Ostbye said. “It also made me much more confident because when I came back I was able to make friends and be outspoken; it didn’t matter to me what people thought or said about me, and I think that honestly changed my life.”
This summer, Ostbye’s “biggest bully reached out to me over facebook and apologized to me which meant a lot even though I had already moved on,” she said.
Even though she felt distanced from the majority of her peers in Cyprus, she credits the experience as having brought her closer to her family.
“I talked to [my parents] about everything that was going on and how I was feeling, and they supported me through the whole time,” Ostbye said. “I am extremely thankful that we have such a close relationship.”