I’ve been a bit absent here on the blog lately because life has been very busy.

It’s halfway through May and we are HURTLING towards summer!

In the meantime, what I’ve been up to:

I started Czech lessons

Some of my students made me a personalized notebook and I decided to use it for good.

Czech lessons are the dark side, truly. Actually, they don’t have cookies, but they do have grammatical cases. Seven of them.

Díky, Integrace Cizinců! This wonderful organization helps foreigners adapt to Czech life in Brno and the South Moravian Region.

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I learned that “98% of Czechs don’t want multi-culturism, but we [they] like kebab”

‘Nuff said.

The gray and black “handwriting” look quite similar, but I really wonder if this was written by a split personality or just a passerby with a self-aware sense of humor.

#Sorryjako, but those 98% might want to think over the irony.

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I discovered a vegan version of svíčková, the Czech national dish

Even a meat and potatoes country enters the 21st century with a huge growth of vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Brno! I really like Forky’s, and I decided to try Vegalite before my Czech class.

Photos courtesy of Menicka and Vegmania.

Besides being the second home, it seems, of a group of tattoo and piercing-clad, punk-attired, cigarette-smoking Germans (truly, you can find anything in Brno nowadays… even hipster Berliners), Vegalite has an extremely reasonable 89-czk lunch menu, and otherwise an extensive menu of vegan food including Czech classics like svíčková (beef tenderloin with vegetable cream sauce), vepřoknedlozelo (pork-dumpling-cabbage), and guláš (goulash).

Considering svíčková is one of my favorite Czech dishes, I haaaaad to try it (109 czk = $4.5!).

It looks almost the same as the normal dish, except the “cream sauce” has mostly vegetable and no cream, so it’s lighter and goopier. Definitely not as satisfying as the real thing, but absolutely a good substitute. The “beef” itself was made of robi steak, which would seem from its Google results to be seitan, and also Czech-invented (these people always manage to surprise me).

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I found a Czech version of my favorite childhood snack, AND baby gummy bears

First of all, I did not think Jojo-brand gummy bears could get better. BUT LOOK HOW CUTE.

Second, Welch’s fruit snacks (esp strawberry) were my JAM when I was child. Any spare dollar I had went to buying this, and I ate them one at a time savoring each one because I had NO LIFE.

They were fat free. Fruit was their first ingredient. That means they were healthy, right?

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Ondra and I saw Chick Corea at the Brno Jazz Festival

The Laser Show Hall is such a cool place. They have fluorescent blue tables and a ceiling strung with tubes of light that look alternately like a huge crystal chandelier, Christmas lights, and… an actual laser game. Plus his drummer is the craziest dude I’ve ever seen.

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I went to the hody in Deblín

and saw the most adorable children dancing there and participating in the festivities.

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Finally, I grew a mustache

Jenom tyčinkový, ale. (But only a pretzel one.)

Happy birthday to one of my many Czech guardians, and thanks to Vysočina (the Highlands) for being gorgeous.