This is a forwarded message From: Marek Blahus <marek@blahus.cz> To: <chook@starpower.net> Date: Friday, July 9, 2004, 5:48:43 PM Subject: OT: Marek Blahus goes to USA ===8<==============Original message text=============== Dear members of the Czech list, this is Marek Blahus from the Czech Republic again - the one who had spent more than a year of active participation in the Czech List before he had to leave it half a year ago, particulary because of time constraints which had emerged as the life had been going on, the study getting more demanding and also the focus slightly moving to new, yet unexplored fields of human knowledge. But I am still with you in my thoughts and with some of you even in occasional written contact. Presently, the time has brought several pieces of news together I would like to remind you of, which provided for a good opportunity to address you with an update on how my life is going. I am doing so, as several listers at the time of my leaving asked me to keep them informed even after I am not there anymore. As I am no more a member of the list, I ask you, Ellaine, to kindly forward this message to the rest of the list members. As I am at the moment writing this letter to you, I am not the same as I was still that half a year ago, at least as far as the Czech law is concerned. Two months ago, on May 16th, I reached the age of 18, which means that I am not a child anymore, but an adult (well, at least according to what the law says :-). Besides the feeling of happiness and pride commonly found in any one in my surroundings who is turning eighteen, this has also practical consequences for me. I do not care about the gained ability to drink alcohol freely at all, nor about the ability to get married (at least not right now :-), but what interests me and my contemporaries at this age the most is the ability to obtain a driving license and start driving a car. I had been preparing for the examination for the driving license together with several my classmates since January, and soon after reaching the legal age, on June 29th, I was finally allowed for the written test and the examinational drive, which I both passed successfully. Now I am only waiting for the driving license to come and yet for an own car to drive, the latter of which is however going to take much longer than the first :-) I have also made good progress in the conventional school education, finishing the academic year on June 30th. This year's report card has been all 1's for me (that means A's in American terms), but one must say that this time the teachers have been exceptionally lenient with us, as otherwise a few 2's would probably have appeared there. Presently I am enjoying a deserved period of summer vacation which lasts for two months, July and August. On the 1st of September I am starting another academic year, the last one for me at the high school. This means that the next spring I am going to take the school-leaving exam, in which I will have to prove my knowledge in 4+ subjects, mostly of my choice. I am going to take the exam in Czech, Maths, English, German and Computer Programming, the latter one being an optional subject. It seems I will have to learn a lot before the exam (which takes place in May), so the following months are going to be very hard for me. But hopefully I will manage to fight it properly, as the following year is indeed almost whole dedicated to revision and preparation for that exam. After I pass it, the door will open to the world of universities. I already have an idea of where to go and most probably my further study will be dedicated to computer programming. It is also likely, that I am not going to have problems in being accepted for study, as the conditions of universities here are set up the way that students with excellent grades get usually accepted automatically. Also this year I participated the contest in English conversation, the same one I participated in the two previous years and vastly reported you then on. This time it has been the last chance for me to participate, and that has also made this year's round special, as for this reason the winners of the district rounds advanced into a regional round, which was not the way in the previous two years. Similarly as then, also this time I managed to win the competition first at school and then at the district level, so I became the lucky one who was allowed to advance to that regional round. There, however, the competition was really tough and all the competitors mastered English at least as well as me, plus the topic I drew to talk about was the worst it could be - imagine, how much you would be able to tell about the flat you live in, being amusing and attractive at the same time? Nevertheless, the eighth place which I gained sounds still pretty good to me. Although I have kind of limited my genealogical research in the recent months, there is still the enthusiasm in me and at the moment I am using it to advertise genealogy and my person on the public. Recently, an article was published in the countrywide Czech newspaper Pravo speaking about the trails I have used to expose the roots of my family, thus being a good example and motivation for the common folks to get interested in genealogy and start researching their own ancestry. The article, of course, is at the same time also a good tool of popularization of my person. It has been extraordinarily well written by an elderly journalist, whom I have never talked to in person. All the communication has been conducted by e-mail, but in spite of that the result is really an article worth reading. As I suppose that some of you might be interested in reading it, I have translated it into English and published both language versions in the internet, along with a scan showing how it originally appeared in the newspaper. So, if you are interested, have a look at the following links: http://www.blahus.cz/soc/2003/pravo/clanek.htm http://www.blahus.cz/soc/2003/pravo/clanek.jpg And yet to the last, most exciting piece of news, for which I have been keeping you in suspense until now. Those of you who have remarked the subject line of this message may yet suspect something, for all I will go on with the details. With the highest probability this summer will be a witness to the fulfillment of one my biggest dreams - to visit the United States of America. In June we received the visa and several days ago we booked the airplane tickets. My father and I are going to visit the USA in the second half of August. We are going to spend a week in Iowa with our American friend who visited us here the last year and we are going to spend another week in the region of New York / Washington in order to get to know the atmosphere of the eastern coast and the most famous sights of American history and today. It is definitely going to be a great experience for both of us! On this occasion I would like to ask those of you who live in the New York / Washington area to come up with a suggestion for a suitable cheap way of accommodation in that region, as we will have to lodge in some hotel there since we have no one there to stay at home with unlike in Iowa. Any suggestions on this topic will be welcome. The time has come to conlude this message and say good-bye to all of you, my dear friends, and thank you again for everything you have done for me. I had enjoyed the communication with you on the list and you will definitely stay in my thoughts for many more years. And if I memory would fail at times, I will still have that article on hand to refresh my memories of good friends. Best regards, Marek Blahus from Czech Republic If responding to this message, please make sure to respond to me privately (my address is marek@blahus.cz). Please do not send mail to the list, as I am no more its member and your message would not reach me in such a case. ===8<===========End of original message text===========