Lincoln Czech Festival

Hello everyone! Well, it's official now and I have the crown and sash to prove it! :) Yesterday was a ton of fun but I definitely wore myself out. I got to the Moose Lodge around 10:30 and wasn't feeling well. Luckily I slowly started feeling better as the day went on.

I sang the national anthem and then the Czech national anthem at the opening ceremonies at 10:45 and I didn't get much of a break for several hours after that!

At 11:00am I played in my first ever accordion jam. It was WAY different than I expected. It was really special because I not only had Brad Husak (my accordion teacher) playing right next to me but also Galen Beck (a close family friend), Shandra Korbelik (a past Nebraska Czech-Slovak Queen) and Maureen Beck (Galen's Daughter and a Past Wilber Czech-Slovak Queen.) I think it was wonderful to see so many young people up there playing (or trying to play in my case!!)

Next at 12:30 I sang with the Czech Choraliers for the first time. It was fun to finally get to perform with them as I have had so much fun getting to know all of them at practice for the past few months.

Then it was time for crowning! Our past queen Catherine Dvorak performed her talent and gave her farewell speech. It's always so hard to see someone have to give up their title. :( She was a beautiful queen and I'm sure the Lincoln Czechs are very proud of her and her accomplishment of being the 1st Runner Up for the state title. All of the queens from around the state were introduced. Next I was introduced along with my prince and princess. I was crowned by Catherine and Carrie Brown (the current Nebraska queen) pinned my sash. I was then able to crown my prince and princess and Carrie put on their sashes also. It is so great to see all of the royalty there and get to know them as I'm sure I'll be seeing all of them a lot throughout the year. We also invited all of our past queens to come back for the 40th annual festival and had 4 come back so I got to hand them each a rose after we had them talk about what they're doing in life after the crown. I also got pictures with them. It was really cool to meet of the past queens and I even knew one of them pretty well so it was good to see her again too.

Less Talk More Polka played next. Luckily they have slowed down some of their music so we were able to dance to it. :) Marsha Dvorak (our past queens mother) asked me to dance to one of the really fast ones....I'm not great at following but we did pretty good if you ask me! I didn't dance a whole lot because next was our dancing bit.

I wanted to be involved in as much as I could at the festival so 3 weeks prior I asked my boyfriend if he would be interested in learning some Czech/Slovak folk dances. We started going to the UNL folk dancing classes and began to practice to perform. We learned 4 dances in those 3 short weeks. Although we weren't' great, we tried and had a lot of fun in the process! We just appreciate everyone being so supportive of us...even when it seemed that we would NEVER get it! What a wonderful group to spend time with. We hope to continue to learn as we know we can only get better from here!!!!

Last but definitely not least...it was sink or swim time! Brad and I had been getting together for accordion lessons but had probably only met about 6 times but I wanted to show off what I had learned. So I agreed to play by myself and just went for it. We went outside and ran through the song once and I messed up about 8 times. I was so nervous I just faced towards him and pretend that we were just playing in his living room like usual. I didn't mess up like I thought I did and am really proud of getting the nerve to do that in front of everyone!!! During this accordion jam towards the beginning they played the Saddlehorse Polka for me as my dad had driven all the way back out to hear me play and that was my Grandpa's song. Dad had his vest on and we danced through the whole song. I know Grandpa was there with me in spirit all day.

Well I've successfully written another novel so I'm going to go for now. It was fun promoting the festival on the news (Channel 8 on Wednesday and 11 on Friday) with my mom and getting ready for a busy day. Click here to see the 10/11 Interview if you missed it. I think I had one or two things Czech related every day last week!!! I however am glad to have a week to catch up on sleep! :)

Na Shledanou
Stefanie Vocasek
2009-10 Lincoln Czech-Slovak Queen
Click Here to View My Calendar of Upcoming Events