In 1998 I went to teach English in The Czech Republic.  My best student, by far, was Helena Karasova.  She wanted to study in the USA to improve her English.  She lived with us and attended our local high school.  She had to return to her country to finish her own high school program.  She was awarded a nice scholarship at Central College in Iowa.  Then Veronika Blechova, two years older and a student also came over and eventually attended the same school.  She will graduate in the spring of 2004.

    Helena and Veronika in June, 2001.  

This is Helena Karasova at Rocky Mountain National Park, in Colorado. Karas, the family name, means "fish."

This is Helena at the "center of things" in ND.  My cousins took us there on the way to the Peace Gardens on the US Canada border.

Helena is from the Czech Republic. She received her degree in 2003 as a double major in political science and German with a 3.97 GPA in each.  She graduated with top honors, Summa Cum Laude, in only 7 semesters.  Helena received the top academic award out of a class of 350 students.  During this time, she served in 4 internships.  After graduation she is worked at Stanford Hospital in the Dept of Patient Relations. She was an assistant to the department director and is learned public health.   She is now attending graduate school at Emory University in International public health. Helena speaks Czech, German, English, Russian and Latin.  Learn more about Helena on her web site http://karasova.com  Read what Central College says about her.

Our other student

This is Veronika Blechova.  Her family name is Blecha, which means "little flea" in Czech.  She is 25 and also a student at Central College.  Both of them come from Trebic, a city of about 45,000, in Moravia and about 2 hours east of the capitol, Prague.  Veronika is a major in French with a minor in business.  She speaks Czech, English, French and some German, Russian and Latin.  Learn more about Veronika on her web site http://blechova.com