With Love
"Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life,” said Mark Twain.
And I try every day to be in that frame of mind. And Saturday, October 17th, is no exception!
I wake up early. The morning sunshine peeking in the window is already suggesting a glorious day! The house is quiet, I tip toe from my bedroom, hurriedly put on a swimsuit, get a towel and I steal out quietly by the downstairs bedroom where all of my teenage dancers are sleeping after the late last night rehearsal! A big day of performance is ahead of us and I need to start it in the most refreshing way!
Off I am to the Dog’s Beach. I park, I run to the beach, drop my towel and jump head first to the waves and it feels like a paradise! Nature does magic to our soul, one feels on the top of the world in her arms!
Back home I knock so very gently on the girls' door as the breakfast is almost ready: My fabulous husband made about thirty pancakes and here we are at the huge wooden table full of goodies, chit chatting and enjoying the food and ginger tea! Then, one more rehearsal, getting into our costumes, making ourselves as beautiful as we can and “See you in the park”!
What you are reading can be a scene of any of the past several years, as it became our tradition that before our performances the girls love to spend a night in my house! They have their own routine of going on foot to the closest taco shop or boba tea shop, chatting (till wee hours) while enjoying each other's company and becoming close friends that makes me happy!
The dancers’ mothers, my wonderful friends, come along at night to help make strudels, iron the costumes and ribbons, arrange small cute bouquets of flowers while chatting, sipping wine or Czech Becherovka. It is a happy joyful loud eventful scene that I love!
But here we are in the beautiful, historical and truly magnificent Balboa Park! The occasion is to represent the House of Czech and Slovak Republics in the annual Lawn Program. Most weekends you can catch an ethnic performance at the international village!
And it started like this: In the thirties, a gentleman, Frank Drugan, had an idea to organize a World Expo in Balboa Park, and he succeeded. On May 29, 1935 a California-Pacific International Exposition opened in Balboa Park and what a success it was! San Diego in 1935 had a population of 188,000 and the Expo attracted 7 million visitors!
The House of Pacific (Peaceful) Relations, the international village, was a part of the Fair, a bold and noble idea by Frank Drugan. He had wanted to create “an experiment of brotherly love”. The nationalities living in San Diego in 1935 were invited to become a part of the project, and were offered a small Spanish hacienda as a cultural center. Fifteen cottages were built for the 1935 Fair, creating the core of today’s international village with a grassy plaza and a stage in the middle. Today we have over thirty cottages to share this fabulous space!
The sitting President Roosevelt was so impressed with the Fair, part of which was paid for by the New Deal, that he visited San Diego in October in 1935 and spoke highly of the event and especially praised the House of Pacific Relations. 60,000 people came to his speech in Balboa Stadium!
Today is October 2026, 91 years after the inception of this idea and we are overjoyed to be a part of the concept, and happy to extend its legacy with our performance.
Our show starts!
The Czech group “Sluníčko”, wonderful teenage girls, start the show with singing the anthems, playing on ocarinas Beethoven’s Ode to Joy that was sung by the entire audience!
"Little Sunshine", my newest group of small children with the youngest three years old, comes next. How cute this group is with two boys and four girls, the older are leading the smaller, helping when they wander off distracted with a bird or an airplane!
They dance, they sing, they charm the audience and a magical moment came when the older girls spontaneously step in and start dancing along the little ones!
The older girls come back to recite a couple poems about Czechs and their eccentricities and typicalities, and then comes their folk dancing! They twirled the Moravian and Slovak dances with a great passionate spirit and it was a delight to see their wide smiles, joy and the yellow and red ribbons flying in the air with the red skirts and embroidered shirts shining against the sun ! How I appreciate their interest and willingness to sacrifice their Sundays afternoons to rehearse!
Banjo-guitar bluegrass duo music is next, and wow, the audience loves it! Czech bluegrass comes with an interesting fact!:The Czech Republic has the most bluegrass bands per capita in the world. We have hundreds of American bluegrass songs translated into Czech. Being locked in Communist Czechoslovakia, many of us did not know these songs are originally from America. So when I moved to this beautiful land and heard a bluegrass song in English, let us say by Johnny Cash, I would turn to the person next to me and say: My goodness, I did not know you had this Czech song in English!
To prove it, we included in our program several Americana songs with Czech lyrics such as Blowing in the Wind, Golden Slippers, Cotton Fields, Where have all the Flowers Gone, etc. We sang half in Czech and half, along with the audience, in English. Moravian folk songs were the last, and thus concluded our 2026 Lawn Program.
We love to perform for you, our audience.
Thank you for coming out in the draining heat, thank you for singing along, clapping for us and just living up that hot Saturday afternoon in the Park.
We appreciate you very VERY much!
Our dance steps or songs may have imperfections, but our love, joy and passion for the arts and appreciation of you is sincere and genuine.
THANK YOU ALL!
Thanks to the performers and others who helped!
In alphabetic order:
Helenka Čapek, Daisy Fricker, Zoe Haselton, Vladislav Hanč, Pavel Chvístek, Simi Kapicka, Maja and Sofia Lambert, Emilka Moran, Kači Pop, Piper Robinson, Hudson and Odin Zabka
Čapek family, Fricker family, Haselton family, Eva Chvístek, Lambert family, Moran family, Petra Pop, Robinson family. Edita Semiginovska and Kapicka family, Zabka family
