Living Abroad

Brendan Duddy 

PrideTime Senior Editor

​“After living abroad it kind of changed my outlook on what home is because I can always take a flight and be back in Connecticut in no time.”

Cailey Martin is a senior at Brien McMahon and part of CGS. She has traveled to 30 different countries, 35 different states and she one day hopes to visit every country in the world at least once before she dies.

This past summer, Martin studied abroad in Spain for four weeks through a Tulane University program. Before that, she went on the two week CGS trip to China as a junior. However, none of that compares to her experience before coming to McMahon.

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Martin began attending McMahon as a sophomore because she had just moved back to the United States after living in Peru for two years. “It was really scary [not knowing Spanish] because I couldn’t understand what people were saying but I could tell they were talking about me,” Martin said.

“I moved there [Peru] because my parents had wanted to live abroad since I was little and they both got a job at the American school in Peru.” She added that her family ultimately moved back to the US because her parents’ contracts expired and they were only granted “a leave of absence from their jobs here for two years.”
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The most challenging part of moving to Peru for Martin outside of learning a new language was the change in the pace of life there. However, once she got used to life in Peru, she liked it. “It’s a lot more stressful in the US.” She also added that “because the countries are so close together, travel is so much cheaper and easier. What may be an 11-hour flight from New York, became an hour and a half flight from Peru. That’s what I liked about living abroad.”

Martin says that she really enjoys traveling because of the opportunity it provides her to get to experience new things that she normally wouldn’t get to experience back home. Her favorite country she’s been to is Spain because “the food is good and the cities are really pretty.”

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Along with her travels, Martin has also tried so many foods. “My favorite food I tried abroad? Chaufa. It’s similar to stir fry. It’s Peruvian food made in a Chinese style of cooking.” She’s also tried some really strange foods, the weirdest of which was guinea pig and alpaca.

Martin says she still tries to stay in touch with her old friends from Peru as much as she can. Right now, she’s looking forward to her trip to Aruba in early March as she slowly continues to check nations off of her list.

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