By Tim Seyfert

Many people often wonder what it would be like to live as someone else and see life through a different set of eyes. Los Altos resident Matthew Sereni got the chance to live out that fantasy recently on a new life-swapping reality series.

Starting next week, the ABC Family network will begin airing “Switched!” a half-hour show that gives teen-agers from different parts of the country a crack at trading identities.

Over the course of four days, the young strangers attend each other’s schools, swap families and even hang out with each other’s friends.

For Tueday’s episode, 18-year-old Sereni, a Pinewood senior who divides his time between playing high school baseball and riding horses, traded shoes with Miko Walczuk, an earthy, new age 17-year-old from Maui, Hawaii.

Last March, both Walczuk and Sereni submitted video taped self descriptions to the show’s producers. A week later, they found themselves on planes bound for each other’s hometowns.

“It all happened really fast,” Sereni recalled. “They don’t tell you anything about who you’re switching with or where you’re going until just before you get on the plane.”

Once in their new “homes,” each teen adapted the other’s daily routine.

For Sereni, that meant trading in the private school and baseball diamonds for home-school and creative arts.

“His parents are both artists,” he said. “He lives in a house near a volcano where everyone sleeps on the floor and all (four) kids are taught by their mom.”

Outside of the “classroom,” Sereni sampled some Walczuk style fun by hiking in the rain forest, swimming with turtles and wind-surfing.

To fulfill his counterpart’s work requirements, Sereni dawned a paper machet mask and portrayed a monkey during one of the family’s regular performance art gigs.

Across the Pacific, Walczuk, meanwhile, kept busy playing varsity baseball, learning to horseback ride and getting used to Los Altos’ non-tropical weather.

“Matt’s life was really cool, ” Walczuk said. “It was fun playing baseball and going to a regular high school. But Los Altos was a little colder than what I’m used to.”

Besides adjusting to different lives, both teens also shared similar difficulties while taping the episode. Among them, getting used to having a production crew constantly tail them and remembering not to look into the camera.

Though neither of them has seen the episode, both said they learned a lot through living as the other, and would even consider switching again.

“You get exposed to a whole new perspective,” Sereni said. “You realize the good things in your own life when you step away from it. I’d do it again if I had the chance.”

“Switched!” premieres May 26 on ABC Family at 4:30 p.m. Sereni and Walczuk will swap lives in the May 27 episode.