Coming soon

I'm really busy now but I want to post some kind of summary after the first semester then maybe something about Space center or soccer season. So I'll see what it will be because how I said I don't have time at all.

Christmas and New Year's Eve

Christmas brake is around to end so I’ll share with you how I felt these days of year as an exchange student.

It is weird to spend this time so far from your home. There are two reasons. You’re not with your family and you don’t celebrate holidays same as usually (in Czech you have a lot of traditions). On the other hand it is a huge fun. In my opinion the way how to recognize any culture better is to live there throughout holidays and see their celebrations. And then when you have awesome host-family (as I totally do have) the homesick is minimal and you are really enjoying time here.

This Christmas was way different then in Czech. I’ll talk only about the things which were new experiences for me. I’m in America so I have to start with food! We made a lot of Christmas candy. I think at least 10 kinds. It was amazing because I tried new candy. I like most one kind which was pastry, coconut, chocolate, pecans, and hazelnuts. I ate it a lot of that. :D

On 24^th December we went to grandparent’s house. In US is not state holiday on 24^th but people celebrate by way that go somewhere for fancy dinner or have dinner at family circle. I also visited church for the first time here in the US.  It was really cool and I’m not surprise why in the US are more younger people attending ceremonies at churches than it happens in Europe. I was at ceremony at 5pm so technically at the midnight ceremony in Czech. J Then we had dinner. It’s clear that I didn’t have carp and potato salad as usually but in the meal were also kind of fish. The name of dish was ……. It was rice and fish soup. It could be described like a paella more like a soup. It was very tasty.  Then we had pecan-pie with ice-cream. After all of that we start repacked gifts. It was awesome I got plenty of them! We sat and talked it was nice spent time.

On 25^th December the real American Christmas started. It was like at movies. With one little exception I was woken up. But then we met at living room in pyjamas and saw the presents. I got toovmany presents. I really didn’t expect that. I do have simply the best host-family ever!

During the Christmas I was killing time by chilling, playing video games, I also did some work to Czech school. Basically I finished everything what I want to. On 30^th December the soccer practices started again so since then I’m busy again.

It kind of influenced my New Year’s Eve. I had practice at 8:30am on 31^st and also 1^st. That was weird for me because that cannot happen in Czech. I think there are only few live people at that time in my country. Thus according to this situation I spent time with Mark, visited one party and then went back home. Around 1:30 I was already ready to fell asleep.

To sum up everything I have to say that I really enjoy this time. It was way different than in Czech but exactly this is the reason why it was so interesting and magical. Moreover, when I spent this time in the best host-family. :)

For the first time at Church. At 5pm in US which was midnight service in Czech. :)

The church 

I love this "small" dog - Dave :)

Dinner table

Socks

Fish soup

Lights on the neighbour's house

Fireworks 

Fireworks. :)

Thanksgiving

Today I’m going to write about Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, this holiday was couple weeks ago so I’ll be happy if I will mention everything what I want to. The article should include several events – CCI Thanksgiving dinner, family trip, family Thanksgiving dinner, and also Black Friday.

At the very beginning I want to let you know what Thanksgiving is and why Americans celebrate it. The tradition says that Native Americans (Indians) shared a good harvest with Americans (colonists). It is celebrated every year on the 4^th Thursday in November. Nowadays, this event means that you meet with family around the table where turkey is (You can also call it “Turkey day”). You spend time together and you have the opportunity to give thanks (for what they are doing for you).  We had a week off from school and had I had many opportunities to celebrate.

Because Melanie is an active local coordinator, Thanksgiving for us (exchange students and their families) started a little bit earlier with a common dinner. She had only one request; for each of us to make a dish from our home country. I chose apple strudel. You bake apples with cinnamon, sugar and raisins in puff pastry. It sounds very simple but the search to buy puff pastry here in the US was quite difficult. Fortunately, I was successful. I think it was quite delicious for my first. (At least everyone said that) :D So we went for dinner a little bit further from Cypress. It was when we found the place we almost wrecked the car. Finally, when we got inside the banquet hall, we met with all of the other exchange students and their families. There were more than 60 people. I really enjoyed the food the other students made. It was awesome. We spent a great night with great people and great food.

School seemed to dragon, but finally we were off for a whole week. You can also spend this time for traveling. One day we went with family to one vacation place in the woods north of Cypress. It was really nice place as you can see in photos.

The preparations for family dinner had begun on Wednesday. We prepared a lot of food for only 8 people. We cooked two turkeys, ham, tons of potatoes and stuffing. Really, I think I’ve never seen more food. (We ate the other turkey the whole next week in sandwiches at school.) I really enjoyed this delicious dinner and after that I as everyone fell asleep. When I woke up the house was decorated for Christmas. It was a really nice and restful time of my exchange year. J

On the other hand, the day after Thanksgiving was freaking crazy. It was “Black Friday”. Black Friday is a day of shopping mania in the US. Everything is on sale so almost everyone is in the stores shopping for something. The news covered several reports of people fighting over discount merchandise. (In their defense, the bargains were really crazy). Everyone told me that I needed to experience it, so I did. We got out amongst the crazy sea of shoppers.  I needed a new phone so we went to Best Buy. Everyone found a good deal on something. At the end of the day, I went alone to the mall looking for some clothes. The sales were pretty cool but you can’t trust what is written on the tags. You expect one price but at the cashier they include a sales discount and then add sales tax. So the final price is totally different, but much smaller than what I expected. This part was awesome.  I bought some clothes for winter. What I didn’t like was the culture of shopping on Black Friday at clothes shops. There were people everywhere and clothes and merchandise scattered all over the stores. Just take a look at the photos to see how gross it was.

My personal finding is that right after Thanksgiving is over we start the Christmas craziness. Same as happens in Czech after Saint Nicholas Day.

For the summary of Thanksgiving break I have only good words. It was awesome. A lot of time to rest and refuel , and a lot of food. It was a very nice time spend with the family. 

Working process  

Apple strudel 

We made an awesome plate for our local coordinator 

part of squad 

Guys 

I'm leaving -> back to Czech

Will he fall down? 

Nature 

Playing with colors 

deers 

Half of food for 8 people

The Addams family show

I’m really excited to share with you this amazing experience. I’m going to write about a school theater show – The Addams Family Musical. Where Mark (my host-brother), played Uncle Fester (one of the big roles). But I’ll start from scratch.

My first High school show was the musical GREASE in other school (Cy-Falls). So I kind of had an opinion about high school theater (and it wasn’t the nicest one). The Cy-Falls production was very slow and the story was fragmented.  It seemed to be a series of songs (which should have been upbeat and fun) but were boring and the people on stage did not seem to have any fun.

On the other hand, I know how much time Mark spent practicing for the Cy-Ranch show. When I’m writing “a lot” I mean  A LOT of time. So I was hoping that this show would be much better.   I was pretty excited about seeing Mark and THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

Finally D-Day came on Saturday night. To add to the excitement, the audience included Tommy Tune Awards judges (competition for high school theatres – something like the Emmy Awards). So I found my seat in our auditorium and waited. (By the way the fact that every school has own auditorium is crazy).  The house was sold out. The show started and I was amazed from the moment the curtain opened until it ended. The performances of characters in the main roles and extras were more than awesome. It was more like professional acting than a high school production. Also the set, costumes, sound, and lights were really incredible. (You may notice that I used a lot of superlatives in last paragraph but to be honest it is still not enough!)  I hope they win every single award.

I was so proud of Mark that I almost cried. :D You know I heard him a lot singing in the shower and basically everywhere. I was happy for them.  They did so great job. Several friends from the cast told me it was their best performance.  I hope the judges were as impressed as I was with the entire performance.

(I uploaded also some photos with our stars. I have two shirts on photos because I saw that twice. :D And I do not have a focused photo with mark only :( )

It’s a pity if you didn’t see it. If you are interested in seeing production pictures, here is a link for official photos. http://ranchtheatre.smugmug.com/Productions/Addams-Family-the-Musical/ )

The Star!!

See he is nice to his fans!! 

"almost" focused

Uncle Fester and Morticia!

Rebecca as a Wednesday was awesome! I love her voice!

'Cause we're Addams!

Muhehe! I have the photo with them and now I have to wait till they will be on Brodway! 

Haunted Houses + Halloween

I’m going to start with haunted houses because it was the beginning of Halloween time for me. I was there the week before Halloween. My friend Martin (who was also in the US) told me that I have to experience a haunted house. Thus when Marianne (Brazilian exchange student) asked who wanted to go to the PHOBIA haunted houses, I was immediately in! Six of us went, but two friends got scared and left before we got in. Phobia has three haunted houses with scary names and we visited all of them. It wasn’t the cheapest way to spend an hour but I didn’t care.  I had an awesome time and the people did really great job. The haunted houses look like ones from a horror movie. As you walk through, people try to scare you. The great thing is that they have great make-up and costumes. You walk throughout rooms like an old creepy motel and a psychiatric hospital and everything together looks so real! You have the creepy feeling that you are in a horror movie but you know you are safe. I really enjoyed this event and I’m highly recommending this to future exchange students!

This was my amazing start to Halloween in the US. We don’t celebrate Halloween in Czech thus everything was new and exciting for me. My overall feeling is that it is pretty big holiday. The week before Halloween prepares you for this event. It is fun. Everyone has a costume. I went to two parties. At one party I was a Johnny Depp type pirate (but unfortunately it looked little bit like a gay pirate :D) and the other I was a character from GREASE.   I had a wonderful time with many of my friends (I have to mention Juliana because she is the biggest fan of my blog. This is for you!).  Kids, teenagers, and adults collect candy when they go from house to house trick-or-treating.  I ate sampled a lot of new kinds of candy!

Beginning of Haloween (2 weeks ago :D)

PHOBIA hounted houses!! 

The 4 brave

I was enjoying that I was scared

CCI halloween party

So awesome :D

Other Halloween party. try to be someone from the Grease

But I didn't catch the group photo. :( :D

After you try this you try the American culture! #S'more 

Renaissance Festival

I know I’m writing after a long time. I was so busy with school but now I have Thanksgiving break so I can look back and summarize what I did in the last month and half. The first article will not be long because the Renaissance festival was long time ago so I’m going to tell you about major things. I heard about this event before in The Big Bang Theory thus I was excited. We were there on Mark’s birthday weekend, I think it was Sunday. The area of the festival is an hour way from our house “in the middle of nowhere”. At the beginning it surprised me how many cars (people) came. We walked to the festival area which is only for this Renaissance Festival so basically it is used only 2-3 month in the year and each year the place becomes bigger and bigger. There were a lot of people wearing thematic clothes and that was awesome. This area is big and there were shops with renaissance stuff and places for performances from that time period. Unfortunately, it rained…. a lot. The entire crowd was under the roofs in shops and almost no one was outside. That was a pity. But before and after the rain I saw what this event means at it is really nice!

Me and Mark

What a beautiful game! :D Literally head basketball :D

We had some arguement so we punched couple times each other and we were good again :D

He makes the world!

Yeah, rainy weather was annoying

The devil's light - romanticism short story creation

Another article out off topic of exchange but I wrote this to English because I had to and I pretty like it! Enjoy! (inspired by romanticism authors such as E.A.Poe, Washington Erving,...)

THE DEVIL'S LIGHT

I was 25 and my life seemed to be successful so far. I finished school in the beautiful city of Brno where I lived. I had my own flat in quiet and safe part of the town and even more I possessed a car. I could not say anything against my circumstances. Also in this age to be a gregarious is nothing special so neither I wasn’t an exception. I loved my very normal life.

One very normal Friday when I was living my ordinary routine I decided to do something different today. At my new boring work I searched for a diversification of my evening. When I found what I had looked for I called to my best friend Mark about this event which appeared at first sight like a lot of fun. When he agreed with this idea I was contented only because I hadn’t known my future destiny.

The party was at countryside near to Brno but not so far from my apartment. It was too far for range of public transport so me Mark took my car and drove through narrow roads in eerie forest which is especially in the night dark, labyrinthine and dangerous. In this daytime your purpose is not to stay in this forest for an extra-long time so when we passed this place and arrived to the club we were happy that the party could began.

After while at the club I saw my crush. I had known her since childhood but she never had ever reciprocated the feelings that I had for her. Then the amazing moment came. As I talked with Mark the beautiful lady walked straight to me. When she stopped at our table I started to pay attention to her instead of my best friend. We had a little argument and in consequence he left. I was a little bit frustrated but the thought was fleeting as I had the opportunity to talk with my crush. She suggested that we should move from table to the bar for a better night. I was hesitant for I driven there, thus I couldn’t drink much but when I heard her tempting voice which sounded like a sirens I wasn’t able to say no. After midnight in the moon light I saw her sparking eyes which told me let’s go somewhere private. I was so captivated, so we used my car to drive her place. As I was driving her beautiful voice told me stories, capturing all thoughts and ideas, and then I saw it - I saw the devil in front of my car. He shined the light of the fiery pits of hell into my eyes blinding me.   In an effort to not crash into these two devils lights I turned the wheel hoping not to hit what was in front of me. As I Swerved into the forest the terrible light followed but before I could get away BOOM we smashed into a tree. I survived. I survived but my childhood sweetheart, entangled into the broken glass and twisted metal of the car, next to me was lifeless. The tears were streaming down my face they blurred my eyes but my hearing was good the noisy sirens of the police cars coming near.  My survival instincts kicked in and I sprinted in any direction I could, I climbed through the brush and trees of the forest searching for the familiar light of my flat.

As I slammed into the door, my normal flat and its familiar walls reminded me of the life that I knew that I would never know again. I frantically called my best friend but he didn’t pick up the phone. My hopelessness couldn’t be described. I called him again and again but he didn’t reply. My mind had created a discussion between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll showed way out but unfortunately this way showed jail and lost life because there was no way that they would not go looking for me because the alcohol on my breath was a dead giveaway. Mr. Hyde showed the light. Showed the same devil light how I saw before again and again it was the persuasive light of sin and evil.

Very next morning my best friend seeing my very normal flat with its very normal walls and very normal cat and very normal me hanging from the very normal ceiling fan.