Omaha Czech Cultural Club Czech Folklore Festival

Well as I said in my previous post...8am cam VERY early to get up and get dressed again for the day. I was asked a few weeks back to MC the entire Omaha Czech-Slovak Folklore festival. I was very excited to have the opportunity to practice speaking in front of an audience through the whole day. It is always great practice when I'm working with groups I don't speak in front of often. We got there early for the accordion jam but I didn't play much because I wanted to explore all the festival had to offer before my duties as MC started. It was a great festival and they had a great turnout! I had a blast watching queens and princesses compete in the kolace eating contest. I also got to be a judge in the cake decorating contest. I did find a break in the day to sneak downstairs and have their wonderful Czech meal.

It was a wonderful day of celebrating our Czech and Slovak heritage in Nebraska! :) After the day was over we went to visit a friend who was in the hospital. Of course I stayed in full kroj. I love seeing people trying to figure out why I'm dressed the way I am when I'm in kroj. He was really surprised and loved having us there to visit. I wish I had time to go to more nursing homes and hospitals to brighten peoples day. Well I'm sure I'll be writing again soon!


Na Shledanou,
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen

Minnesota Czech Slovak Queen Pageant

Well...it's been a while since my last CRAZY road trip so we thought we were about due for another! HAHA!

We left for Minnesota at 3:30am to make it there for a lunch with the contestants. We got there even earlier than planned and went up to New Prague to see the sights there. I found an awesome wallet with a crown on it in one of the shops there along with wine wafers made in the Czech Republic for hundreds of years. Lunch with the girls was great and all of the contestants were so much fun. I had a blast getting to know them and knew the pageant would be great! After lunch the girls had to go to their dress rehearsal so I decided to tour the town of Montgomery, MN. We first went to their kroj display. It was awesome because they had a collection of kroj from past MN queens. I remembered seeing a lot of them in Wilber at the national pageant in years past. They had Becky's dolls there too. (Becky was the MN queen in 2004 when I first ran as a chapter queen and we have kept in touch since.) Then we found a Czech imports shop where I bought a painted glass and some honey for my roommate (who has her own honey bees.) I ran into Leah (another past MN queen) and surprised her because she didn't know I was coming for the pageant. After killing a bit of time I went back to the David's house to get ready for the evening. They were so kind to open their house up to the visiting queens.

As expected the pageant was awesome. :) I was excited that one of the Robitcek Scholars from UNL, Helena, came with the national queen Brianna. She was new to all of this queen stuff and loves to take photos so it was fun to sit with her and watch her reaction to how the queens represent the Czech heritage. They had 4 contestants this year and all of them deserved to be queen. In the end Debbie was crowned the new MN Czech-Slovak Queen and will compete with me in Wilber in August. We are gonna have a blast together. I wish we could have stayed longer for their dance after the pageant but could only stay for a few hours as we had to be back in Omaha at 9am the next morning.

Funny story...before we left the dance we were talking to a group of people from MN about polka bands. They had once played in a small town in Nebraska and while they were there everyone told them they had to go to the Clarkson Czech Festival as it was just a short drive. They drove up and watched part of the pageant and enjoyed the festivities. They said they had a blast watching this girl performing her talent at the pageant. She was singing Annie in the Cabbage patch and acting like the boy...then acting like the girl....ok those of you who know me....is this starting to sound familiar....IT WAS ME!!!!!!!!!!! HAHA! I was laughing so hard that of all the things and all of the people they remembered from the festival it was my performance.

We were back on the road for a long drive (although I slept almost the whole way.) We were hoping to drive all but an hour back but when I woke up we were in Omaha. We wanted to find a cheap hotel room as we would only be there for about 4 hours (as it was already 4am by the time we arrived) and thought it would be no problem....boy were we wrong! There must have been something going on in town that night because we stopped at 5 or 6 places and they were all booked full. We were about to head back to Lincoln when we made one more stop and FINALLY found a place to crash for the night. 8am would come pretty early to head to the Omaha festival the next day!

Na Shledanou,
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen

Czech and Slovak Americans Symposium at UNL

About a year ago I started about a Symposium that was to be held in April 2010. It was about Czech and Slovak Americans. I was really excited because I knew there was a lot to learn from this symposium. I was excited to attend the kick-off of the symposium where Czech queens from around the state were the hostesses. We got to visit with many people who were in town for the symposium. They also had an art display with photos of Czech buildings etc from around the state and display of kroje. The next day I spent learning all sorts of new things. It was great to have such great speakers from around the US there to talk to us about Czech and Slovak Americans. That evening I got to play in an accordion jam with a group made up of button accordion players from around the state. We then got to walk to the Sheldon art museum to listen to Czech Opera pieces. It was BEAUTIFUL! They had all of the singers dressed in kroje which made it EVEN BETTER! I was excited for another day of all things Czech and enjoyed more lectures on the 2nd day and learned more. It was so great to be surrounded with so many things to soak in. The final event was the CLF banquet. I have attended this several times in the past. UNL is lucky to have different sponsors donate to provide a scholarship to all of their Czech students. This banquet is in honor of them and the impact they have on the students education. I had fun sitting with several other queens from NE and beyond! :) I think I could have taken a few more days of this symposium so I was sad for it to be over but was very glad to have this experience! :)

Spanem Bohem!
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen

Doane Heritage Celebration

Somehow after all of these years I still hadn't ever made it to the Doane Heritage Celebration (previously the Doane Concert.) I was excited to get to go but still a bit tired from the trip back from St Louis. When we got there I was excited to see so many people there. I was having fun trying to practice my Czech with their quizes (I did ok on the animal names but not so well on the others) and after a bit of time I was ready to join in with the accordion jam. I tried to sneak in during introductions but they saw me and I had to introduce myself. :) HEHE! It was great to get to see some family and friends in Wilber again because I don't make it down there as much as I would like to outside of Czech events with my busy schedule. I had some lunch and then went over to Sue's house to go over a few things for my new kroj. As soon as we got back to Sokol we had to run down to the Museum and I had a good time showing my Mom around down in the basement. Somehow after all these years of going there she had never been! I told her how scary the basement used to be when we were little. Thanks to Steve for letting us in to see it all. When I got back to Sokol I even got to polka a little with Jon Halama. (Someday I'll teach Brad how so he has no excuse! HEHE!) It was a great day but I was tired and ready to go home when we finally left (we were some of the last 6 there and ended up having a mini accordion jam by the time the night was over.) I look forwarad to going again next year. :)

Na Shledanou,
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen