Our Czech foreign students

Our Czech students

In 1998 I taught English in Trebic, 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 graduated in the spring of 2004.

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    Helena and Veronika in June 2001.  

Helena Karasova at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Karas, the family name, means “fish.”

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Helena is 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 worked at Stanford Hospital in the Dept. of Patient Relations. She was an assistant to the department director and learned about public health.   She attended graduate school at Emory University in International public health. Helena speaks Czech, German, English, Russian, and Latin.  Learn more about Helena on her website http://karasova.com 

Our other student

This is Veronika Blechova.  Her family name is Blecha, which means “little flea” in Czech.  She was 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 capital, Prague.  Veronika got a major in French with a minor in business.  She speaks Czech, English, French, and some German, Russian, and Latin.  

Veronika has been living in France, is married, and has a daughter, Victoria.

Updated 30 March 2023