Annika Hankenson 12 shared an experience from her freshman year when she was nominated for the Voyager’s International Trip. She shared her journey through all the countries she performed in.

“My freshman year I was in a regular choir class, and my choir teacher nominated me for the Voyager’s International Trip, which is something you have to be nominated for. They had a choir, a band, and an orchestra, and we all met at Cherry Creek High School a week before leaving, and we did rehearsals and learned all the music. We went to 7 different countries: London, England; Paris, France; and Crans-Montana, Switzerland. We also went to Germany and Austria and we got to perform in each of the places that we went, including Venice. The cathedral that’s in the town square in Venice was where we got to perform, and they roped off a little area for us to sing. The Swiss people in Crans-Montana love when people do this trip, so they set up a fondue party for us. We all sat at these big, long tables and if you dropped your bread in the fondue, you had to get up and kiss whoever you were interested in on the cheek. By the end everyone was trying to knock each other’s bread off our sticks. They brought out all the traditional dancers and musicians, so we got to learn the traditional dances; that was by far my favorite part of the trip. In Liechtenstein we went to this little cafe, and there was only one person there who spoke a little English. They brought out these huge smoothie-blended coffees with wafers and chocolate covered coffee beans. As the trip went on, we got to do more personal site-seeing. In Venice, we got to see the Venician glass makers and we saw one guy make a glass vase. We flew out of Frankfurt to Iceland and from there to the United States.”