Czech Cultural Club Omaha festival

Oh, how I like Czech festivals in Nebraska organized by people with Czech heritage here. Always nice people enthusiasm to talk about Czech. Some of them dressed up in typical Czech-Moravian costumes (kroje). A lot of good food and good drinks.

Me with other Czechs were invited to come to Omaha to Czech festival last Sunday. We were supposed to have presentation about our town, as it had the last time we visited Czech festival great success. So we were prepared to set off our way to the biggest city in Nebraska. But not at 7:45 in the morning when some guys pick up us in front of our dorms. Never mind, another day without much sleep...

However, it was great day finally. We judged the home made cakes - unfortunately just visually, we couldn't taste them. We called numbers in the Czech bingo game and had presentation about our lovely towns. We weren't the only original Czech in the festival, couple Czech soldiers showed up there. They came to Nebraska for 3 weeks lasting observing how to effectively reorganize army. So, since now I guess we can feel safer, as we know that we got inspired by American army ;) Have a great day!

Czechoslovakia probably will stay in mind of Americans for a long time... Here you can read something about our Christmas.

Monika and the real St. Nicolaus.

Cool band...

Festival took place in Sokolovna - at this place normally people excercise. This time there are stalls with different "Czech stuff".

I haven't seen blue kroj before, but it's nice.

We took care of the Czech bingo.

Line of people waiting for the Czech dish - pork/duck + saurkraut (mistni vyraz pro kysely zeli;) + potato dumplings. This huge line was there for a whole day and they sold about 1000 meals. To the festival came amazing 1200 people!!!!!! Would you believe that? In Nebraska? ;)

Whoohoo, I won!!!!

I don't like bingo so much, but calling the numbers in Czech was fun ;)

Hmmm, duck... And the bread similar to the Czech one - great! And kolaches. Everybody loves kolaches in Nebraska and not just the people with the Czech heritage.

Sokoli, sokolice a sokolcata. Many Czech names on the floor ;)

Future generation of Nebraskan's Czechs. Hopefully this nice heritage and tradition will last forever...

Folklore dances.

Board about our scholarship and us. Nice, thanks guys!

Monika is having presentation about her town Bilina. If somebody don't know - North Bohemia ;)

The world is small - Czech soldiers in Nebraska. And this one is moreover from my city Prostejov. Btw we were 3 people from Prostejov - Ada, my friend from grammar school who is studying in Omaha came as well. Prostejov rocks!!!!

Like in the hockey game ;)

Future Czech Nebraska queen? Maybe...

Sokolovna and the end of the festival. Cleaning up of the huge room (and downstairs there is another one big room).

It's over, but next time again. Czech heritage in Nebraska lives on...

Last Huskers game this academic year

Now it starts the time when is everything for the last time for us. It's sad, we are desperate of it, but it's all we can do with it ;) Something ends and something new starts. But, why the hell it had to be so short!!!

So, at least enjoy the pictures from the last game/practice of Nebraska college football team - Huskers. It wasn't a normal game, it was Nebraska against Nebraska - the team split up to two sub teams (red and white). And who won? I guess red, because when we were leaving after two quarters they were winning about 45:0 ;)

Even it was practice over 50000 people came

Go BIG REEEED!!!!!!!

This is just a huge screen...

Everybody is happy here ;)

Red agains white, but both playing for Nebraska Huskers

Do you believe that this is a stadium just for college football?

Logo of Nebraska football...

Maskot of Huskers and whole University getting hobla ;)

Best drinkers in the world - Czech and Irish ;)

That's why we couldn't promise with this kids that we won't

use drugs including alcohol and cigarettes...

Another perspective...

This perspective is with Monika...

... again Monica, me and Rory from Ireland!!!

People are very creative - I love Nebraska Parody

So here's the version of I love Nebraska of some guy who loves Nebraska but not so much the song ;)

I love Nebraska, don't you as well? ;)

Wow, so this video is hilarious... Don't take it much seriously, in reality it's fortunately better ;) Not just corn everywhere and going to the church every Sunday morning... But in the clip you can see some places where we have here in Lincoln - like our huge stadium or State Capitol, which are pretty cool.

So have fun... I'm sure you will ;)

Califronia is waiting for us...

Yosemite National Park

So we finally bought the air tickets to San Francisco today. Me, Czechs and 3 Irish guys are going to explore the beauties of San Francisco, California national parks, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City and Yellowstone National Park (and I probably forgot much more stuff ;)). It's gonna be a long trip while we are flying in 8th May and planing to stay there till 26 or 27th May.

I'll let you know the details of our trip later. And I'm finalizing my summer schedule, so hopefully I'll tell you the final version soon. However, it looks like I'm gonna stay in the U.S. for whole summer and maybe till September. So, who wanna see me before September, just come here, you are more then welcome ;) Have a great day!

Finally - all pictures from Spring break in FLORIDA

I finally found some time and upload the best pictures from our trip to Florida. There are a lot of pictures so take a rest for a while and imagine that you are in sunny and warm Florida. Enjoy and let me know how do you like the pics or share whatever else you wanna tell me ;) Looking forward on your feedback...

Confused what to do during the summer...

I have just one more month here and when my stay is coming to its end I'm getting more and more nervous and confused. I just don't wanna leave my friends, college and surprisingly Nebraska as well ;) But I know too that I have to leave and move to another life experience and adventure.

However, when I have this huge opportunity to be in the U.S. (and Czechs and other people who need visa to get to the States know what I'm talking about) I don't wanna leave so soon and I wanna stay here at least for this summer. It's not so easy, because I need to get internship or some work to prolong my visa otherwise I have to leave one month after my current visa expires (at the end of classes - May 4th). And believe me, it's not so easy to get the qualified internship here, especially for foreigners. I applied for some internships, but unfortunately not for many (time is just thing which I miss here ;)) so I start loosing my ideals to get internship for summer in advertising agency, which would be my dream work. I got great interest in advertising after my arrival here and advertising became my major here. Most of my classes are advertising classes...

Another possibility for me to stay here is to go work to kids camps. Two friends offered me that I can go work with them there. To one camp to work like help staff and to another one to be children counselor (which could be probably better, because it's maybe better work, I would have weekends off, it's close to New York; but on the other side this work starts in the middle June which is kind of late and I don't know what I would do here till this time...).

I would like to travel for a while to Washington to work on my bachelor thesis (hopefully I'll write my thesis about American visa policy towards new members of the European Union). I talked to our ambassador Jaroslav Kurfurst who I met here in Nebraska (I posted about it here) and he could help me to find some cheap accommodation and give contacts for some people I could talk to about it...

However, after classes end I wanna travel for a while. It looks that we could go to California and then through Utah to Wyoming to Yellowstone park. So cross your finger for us to manage it ;)

And what are you planning for the summer?

At John&Tim's home - Harvard in Nebraska

So here are some pics from great weekend in Harvard. I'm very happy that my friends brought me with them and showed me their home. Nice to experience family atmosphere after a long time ;)

Me and whole Turnquist family

Tim trying to show how he likes his mom ;)

Dad walking on the roof...

Tim inside of the very nice house...

The house from the front side

Back side of the house

Cat aren't definitelly the favourite animals at Turnquists' house...

They are always behind the "wiener dog" ;)

The dog didn't love me so much, he just does it to everybody ;)

Getting to know real Nebraska countryside and American family life

So, I got off Lincoln for the weekend and went with my twin friends Tim and John to visit their home. They live in Harvard, small town with about 1000 people living here and it's about 70 miles far away from Lincoln. Nothing big is going on here, but it's nice place to live in - kind of quiet but with community life and people knowing each other.

Anyway, it's very nice that my friends brought me with them and enabled me to have a look like the American family life looks like ;) So I've talked to their mom and dad who are both very nice and played with their cute wiener dog. Tonight we are going to close larger city called Hastings to have a dinner and just hang around. So nothing so special, just chilling out after this stressing week.

Btw now I'm in the computer room at Harvard's high school and the whole building looks like the typical high school from American movies ;) Cool experience. Thanks for that!

Have a great weekend...

New Robitschek scholars selected - Congratulations!!!

So, that's it, the sad time for us, the current Robitschek scholars and the time full of excitement for new people. We have to leave and new four people will come. This Monday were the new scholars for year 2007/2008 announced.

Dominika, Mariana, Jakub and Tomas congratulations!!! You can looking forward to year which you never forget about. New people, new country, new culture, new collage... But without your family and old friends. However, you have here the support of three great people, our advisors - Carmen, Alan and Larry.

It's my pleasure that one person of these four is from Brno, my lovely college city and accidentally from the same faculty as I am - Faculty of Social Studies. Other three are from Prague.

I'm kind of jealous that you have this awesome experience ahead, but I wish you all the best. Enjoy your time here as you can and if you have any questions just let me know...

Czech Ambassador Dr. Jaroslav Kurfurst in Lincoln

This guy was very nice. We talked to him for almost hour about visa problematics, our impressions of America and a lot of other stuff. He wasn't cold and diplomatic typical diplomat at all ;)

Nice tradition - Czech Queens

Me and Lincoln Czech Queen

And this is the Czech Queen of whole Nebraska that represents Nebraska in competition of all Czech Queens from all around the U.S. (and next to her Czech King of Nebraska ;))

This time we didn't have to work and we enjoyed to be served...

We were invited by this lady. She still speaks very good Czech and is excited about Czech Republic and Czechs especially ;)

Banquet of the Czech Language Foundation in Nebraska - 100 years in Nebraska!!!

It's very nice to be Czech in Nebraska. As there are around 10% people with Czech heritage here, they are still very interested in the Czech Republic (but mostly they still think of it like Czechoslovakia). This week there was Czech week on campus. They released Czech movies (Dobry vojak Svejk, Cesky sen), had some presentation about living in the Czech Republic and the Czech Beer festival where you could drink Czech beers (Pilsner Urquell, CzechVar - American brand of Budweiser Budvar, Kozel, Radegast).

Today, the Czech week ended with the Czech Language Foundation banquet. This foundation supports the teaching of Czech at University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). Otherwise, there couldn't be any classes of Czech without this support and private donors. However, there weren't just stuff related to this foundation. We saw some music performance, Folk Dance Presentation - one couple in traditional Czech costume (kroj) danced Polka, but the did it very well in way I haven't seen it before.

For the celebration of Czech heritage came to Lincoln Jaroslav Kurfurst, ambassador from Czech Embassy in Washington. He had very good presentation about Czech-American Relations and had couple right points. I wanna pinpoint especially one - when I see this enthusiastic people trying to keep their Czech heritage and it's traditions and when I see all the stuff they do, I'm really PROUD TO BE CZECH!!!