Gunnison High School (GHS) recently welcomed exchange student Cristina Ivars from Spain. Ivars is 16 years old and is attending GHS for the spring semester, after spending the fall semester in Louisiana. 

Ivars has spoken very highly about GHS saying, “I really love it here, I chose to come and I’m glad I did.” Her sister was also an exchange student at GHS for her senior year in 2021. Ivars and her family came here to visit her sister’s exchange family for Christmas and Ivars fell in love, however at the time she was at a high school in Louisiana. She was very unhappy there, saying that “the school was hard and the people weren’t very nice, I also did not get to practice my English skills very much because there was a group of other Spanish speaking exchange students.” She also commented that nothing here is similar to the Canary Islands. In the Canary Islands the grade level system goes by Primary School (Grades 1-6) and Secondary School, which starts over and is grades 1-4. After that students have the choice to go through with higher education which is called Baccalaureate in Spain, which is essentially a college bachelor’s degree.

Ivars enjoys traveling, socializing, art and going to the beach. She even says that art is her favorite class here at GHS. She has traveled to many places, including 8 states in the U.S like New York, Washington, California and Illinois. She also enjoys listening to music, when being interviewed a Taylor swift song came on and she immediately started singing along to it, claiming that Swift is one of her favorite artists.

GHS continues to welcome Ivars with open arms for the remainder of the Spring semester. She hopes to continue to stay here and live what she calls the “American experience”.