Summary of the questionnaire
Most of the participants expected meeting a nev culture, or didn't have any expectations at all.
The impression of the project was positive in all cases, the responses were generally just "good", "awesome" or synonyms of these words.
All the participants liked their host families, even though some complained about the language barrier.
Friendly atmosphere was the most frequently mentioned positive, while the negatives aside from beforementioned barrier were ll connected to Spanish daily program, particularly meal times.
If there was any uneasiness, it was mostly because of a communication problem, individuals mentioned also the fact, that we visited too many (despite them being interesting) churches where we sang.
The most enjoyable activity for most of the participants was the visit in the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos. Not only listening to Gregorian chant but also the possibility of a small performance of the choir has left a deep experience in everyone. In addition to the visit of the monastery, numerous responses included a visit to the workshop of the organ and its tour. Some positive responses including demonstration of the work of Antonio de Cabezon at the Conservatory of Palencia and a trip to the composer's native village occurred several times. A visit to the cathedral in Burgos was very interesting for the participants. There they had the opportunity to see the organ with vertical pipes which cannot be seen in our country. Finally, most of the participants enjoyed themselves singing in all of the churches and at the concerts.
More than a half of participants would skip the tour of the conservatory because it was lengthy and too detailed. A lot of participants would leave out the visits to most of the churches. "Impressive cathedrals worth seeing because the architecture is amazing but the village churches were just ordinary." There was also notion that the presentations for students should have been omitted because the spanish student were "tired and not interested at all.“ All activities were satisfactory for a quarter of participants and they would not change the program.
Nearly a half of the participants was satisfied with the program, they would not add any activities and they think that the project activities were perfect. A quarter of those surveyed would like to see more joint activities with the Spanish students. Among the possible proposals for othere activities was the idea of making music together with the Orchestra of Lerma and spending more time practicing polka in condition to really teach it to the Spanish students, not only to show them that polka exists. Another proposal was to include the contemporary Czech music to the program.
All students would highly recommend this project to anyone. The only problém for most of the Czech non-spanish speaking Czech students was that most of the Spanish students couldn’t speak english well.
On average, the expectations of the participants were charged with nine points on a ten points scale.
Written and translated by Viktor Němeček and Pavel Kolář