I went to Prague a week earlier than the tour, and we went to the Synagogue the first day. When you walk into one of them you see that all the walls are covered with the names of holocaust victims, and upstairs they had artwork of Jewish children in the area right before they had been sent to camps. Just seeing the mass number of names and the ages that these children were killed at always hits hard, not really a surprise anymore because I've studied the holocaust multiple times in school and I've been to many exhibits for it. But then I walked out into the cemetery and there were so many stones there to represent the victims, just from the area, that they couldn't fit them all in so the stones were crowded in. The walls of the cemetery were carved with the names and eulogies of victims, and headstones were laying flat on the ground. It was really chaotic and for the first time I could actually see these things rather than just pictures in a text book. It was strange to think about it in that setting, where it happened. Tess Woodbury, oboe

I heard a few of the coaches teaching sections to not play so European. This surprised me because many of the American coaches stress on playing in the traditional European style. Jill Reisner, trombone

The amount of English. I was utterly shocked at how well they spoke and their overall mastery of a foreign language. Suzie Li, violin

I am so used to a mixed cultural-ethnic group of people. The majority of people had similar ethnic backgrounds. Kirsten Skabelund, violin