Talya Frost said though she didn’t travel much outside her home in suburban Portland, Ore., she was always itching to see the world. By the time she arrived on the Ithaca College campus this year, Frost had achieved that dream, living and studying in both Mexico and Argentina.

Now a 17-year-old junior majoring in psychology, Frost said her international experiences started when her family decided to move to Mexico because they wanted to live abroad. At the time, Frost’s father had started running his business completely online and her mother was working as a writer, so the family had nothing keeping them in Oregon.

“We sold our houses, we sold our cars, we got rid of our stuff. My dad basically said, ‘You’re getting a box and a backpack and that’s it,’” she said. “I was really up for traveling, and I wanted to learn languages.”

When most of her peers were starting high school, Frost was beginning her new life in another country.

Frost lived in Mexico for a year taking classes at an all-Spanish, private high school. Then her family moved to Argentina, where she lived for another year before returning to the U.S. for a summer to earn her General Education Diploma. After moving back to Argentina and taking college courses there for another year, she moved back to the U.S. for good and settled on Ithaca to finish college.

Before Frost moved to Mexico, she said she knew a little Spanish from middle school but  nowhere near enough to converse on a daily basis. Frost said it forced her to learn the language through immersion.

“It was really tough,” she said. “All my classes were in Spanish, my friends didn’t speak English, and teachers didn’t speak English. I mean, the English teacher barely spoke English.”

After living in Mexico for only a year, Frost’s family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a place for Frost to “study abroad” — a long-standing family tradition. Frost said two of her older sisters went to Brazil, one to Chile, and her dad studied in India.

This time, Frost took classes at a bilingual school — something she decided to do to keep up with her Spanish and English.

But Frost said the other students were more interested in practicing English than letting her use her Spanish, so she felt like she wasn’t learning anything.

“I was afraid all my friends in the States were so ahead of me, and I was going to be behind, and I was going to come back completely lost and have an education of an eighth grader,” she said.

Instead, Frost contacted professors living in Buenos Aires and asked them to give her private lessons. She did this nontraditional schooling for a year before returning to Portland to earn her GED while also taking courses at a local college.

After earning her GED, Frost returned to Buenos Aires to attend Lincoln University but, after only a year of classes, decided to finish her degree in the U.S. She said she was concerned American employers would not accept a degree from Argentina.

Frost’s mother, Maya, said the family’s years abroad taught her daughter to grow in the midst of change.

“She really got yanked out of her comfort zone,” Maya Frost said. “She learned how to deal with that, she really did.”

Frost said it has been “a piece of cake” adapting to life back in the U.S. and adjusting to the college experience.

“It was probably five times easier to come back because for the first time, it was my own culture, my own language,” she said. “I didn’t have to adapt to any kind of new system.”

Junior Erin Schoch, also a transfer student, met Frost during orientation and said Frost’s age has not inhibited her at all.

“She acts much more mature than I did when I was 17,” she said. “She’s willing to have a deep conversation with you. She’s a blast to hang out with, too.”

Maya Frost said her daughter has always been mature.

“I think Talya was born old,” she said. “She’s always acted older than her age. She’s been a little reluctant to let other people know how old she is because she doesn’t want to be treated differently. Seventeen is just a number.”

Frost said when people realize she didn’t have the traditional high school experience, they are most surprised that she missed out on prom.

“I went all over South America, I mastered a second language … I completely engaged myself in a community and managed to rack up two years worth of credit,” she said. “Yet the one thing [they] can come up with is prom.”

Frost said that even though she is so young and already in college, she is not that different from everyone else.

“It’s weird because people are like, ‘Oh, you must be a genius!’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘No, not really.’ That’s just how it went, it just worked out perfectly for me.”