Sophomore Livia Felicitas Cotar, an exchange student from Switzerland, is trading Swiss cheese and chocolate for Californian beaches and sand.

Cotar, 15, left her home in Zurich to expose herself to a new culture; improving her use of the English language was her first task.

“I wanted to learn, first, the language English to improve it, and [for] the whole experience. Like, you will remember this for your lifetime,” Cotar said.

Cotar chose to attend the year-long foreign exchange program Educatius in Oak Park for the opportunity of being a student in California.

“I got to choose the state and the school,” Cotar said. “But you had to pay an extra amount of money because so many kids want to go to California and New York.”

In her free time, Cotar enjoys playing soccer and plans to try out for the Oak Park girls’ soccer team. She said she also attempts to completely immerse herself in the American culture.

“I hang out with friends, I eat and I go to the beach and do sports like running,” Cotar said.

Cotar is currently being hosted by the Dahl family; she has two host sisters –– one older and one younger and is also living with another exchange student, Katharina Arwen Viktoria Bollogöhn.

According to Cotar, the most drastic differences between Zurich and California are the weather and the people.

“I think the weather because, most of the time here it’s always sunny,” Cotar said. “The people are [also] very nice. In Zurich, when someone thinks you’re beautiful, they [just] look at you, so I was so surprised whenever girls say like ‘Oh, you’re so beautiful!’ I was like ‘What? Oh, thank you!’ People are just not that nice [in Zurich].”

Cotar’s friends and family back home were very supportive when she told them that she wanted to study abroad.

“I mean they were, like, happy for me,” Cotar said. “But they were like, ‘No, don’t go I’m gonna miss you, but [still] go because you should do that.’”