Up With Zeljka

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Where am I? 
Varaždin, Croatia

What time is in...??

Zagreb, Croatia


Denver, USA


Bangkog, Thailand


Washington DC, USA


Sponsors&support














Photos 


United Nations Culture of Peace Forum, New York, USA




Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, New York, USA




Hartford, Connecticut, USA




Woonsocket, Rhode Island, USA




Washington DC, USA




Easton, Maryland, USA




Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA




Atlanta, Georgia, USA




Brussels, Belgium




Hasselt, Belgium




Erfurt, Germany




Uelzen, Germany




Vimmerby, Sweden




Sodertalje, Sweden 02



Sodertalje, Sweden 01



Bangkok, Thailand



Phuket, Thailand 05 - CI



Phuket, Thailand 04



Phuket, Thailand 03



Phuket, Thailand 02



Phuket, Thailand 01



San Diego, California



Tucson, Arizona



Gallup, New Mexico, USA



Denver - 4th week



Denver - Rocky mountain hiking



Denver - 3rd week



Denver - rafting trip


Denver - 2nd week


Denver - 1st week

 About Željka

Name: Željka Baniček
Gender: Female
Age: 24
Hometown: Varaždin, Croatia
Faculty: Faculty of Organization and Informatics
Year of study: graduate

Up with Peple web page

Why UWP? traveling, helping people, making friends

Contact me: upwithzeljka@gmail.com

Some Links:
Video: VTV interview in show "Koktel"
Article: Studentsli Lider Klub
Article: FOI web page


Visit my tour friends blog:
Marianna Alfa Fernando-Pacua (Philippines)
Rafael Cardoso (Brazil)
Callie Amweg (USA)


 About UpWithPeople
Program I'll attend: July 7 - December 10 2007

Five Aspects of UpWithPeople program:
1) International Participants
2) World Travel & Host Family Living
3) Community Partnerships
4) Global Education
5) The Show

Visit UpWithPeople web page

Cast C tour:
USA:
7 July - 6 August
Denver, Colorado
6 August - 13 August
Tucson, Arizona

AZIJA:
13 August - 3 September
Thailand

EUROPA:
3 - 10 September
Espoo, Finland
10 - 17 September
Sodertaije, Sweden
17 - 24 September
Vimmerby, Sweden
24 September - 1 October
Uelzen, Germany
1 - 8 October
Erfurt, Germany
8 - 15 October
Hasselt, Belgium

USA:
15 - 22 October
Gwinnett County, Georgia
22 - 29 October
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
29 October - 5 November
Easton, Maryland
5 - 12 November
Woonsocket, Rhode Island
12 - 19 November
Hartford, Connecticut
19 - 26 November
Suffern, New York - Mecy's thanksgiving parade
26 November - 3 December
Somerset Hills, New Jersey
3 - 10 December
Bangor, Maine

 13.05.2008., utorak

Up with People Small Reunion

So, last week I had a friend visiting me after a long time we've finished Up with People. It was Faith from Chicago. It's not quite the same as the whole cast of Up with People was not around, but for the first time I can say I was a host mum.

We had amazing time together. Faith stayed for a week and I showed her around and we were just chilling, enjoying and remembering our good times.

She loved our graveyard ( Varazdin graveyard is one of the most beautiful ones in Europe). We went to visit museum of "Stari grad" and we visited few schools so she as a native speaker can talk to Croatian kids.

Here is part of our little week:

- 09:33 - Comments (4) - Print - #

 07.03.2008., petak

Up with People videos

Hi!!

So... here is the link where you can find some videos.

http://www.sonicblush.com/uwpmedia/uwp_media.html

Two videos are closely connected to my cast, Cast C 2007:

  • On the road - a week in Hasselt, Belgium with Up with People, Cast C 2007

  • School project in Vimmerby, Sweden, Cast B 2007 ( it's actually Cast C)



If you still have some doubts about applying to Up with People, I hope this videos have show you what you can expect.
And if you still have doubts after watching this videos, you can always contact me and I can help you.

On both videos you can also see me...

Anyway... I'm doing great... Everyday I'm in contact with my Up with People friends. We are like big family and we take care of each other.
- 09:45 - Comments (0) - Print - #

 12.12.2007., srijeda

I'm back home

I am sitting in my room in Croatia and I don't know how to express how do I feel.
After almost 32 hours of traveling I'm back home. I come yesterday around 12.30 European time, 6.30AM East USA time and all my family wanted to see me.
When I finally reached my bed, I can't believe, but I have been sleeping for 15 hours.

Here is what I wrote during my travel 2 days ago on Boston airport:

It's 10th December and I’m flying back home. I’m at the moment at Boston airport and I had logiest saying goodbye experience ever.

Yesterday we had our final banquet and it was pretty emotional. We were drop off at 3PM and first we had educational time when we all tried to remember what was happening in the past 6 months in every each city. We laughed as we heard some really good stories and I really enjoyed every minute remembering what we all went through in past 6 months.

At 8PM, our final banquet started. I don’t remember right order, but we had some really cool moments together. They prepared for us, for every each person different awards and my award is for person who took the most photos ever in past 6 months.

After that we had some musical moments and some jokes. At the end, we finished getting our “Up with People diploma” when all staff members gave us diploma and congratulated for finishing the program.

After that we started to say goodbye to each other and at that point I still haven’t realized that end is here and that we really don’t have any time left. We started to pack bus and bus left Bangor at 2AM.

Bus ride passed very quickly and next thing I remember was Boston airport, 6AM, and taking luggage from the bus and starting to say goodbye to some people that are going to different terminals. That was hardest thing to do. I started crying like little baby and half of the people with who I was pretty close went to different terminal.

Few of us stayed at terminal C and one by one, everyone started to leave me. Last person with who I said goodbye was Martin, our cast manager. At least I thought he is going to be the last one at that time, but when I went to my security entrance, I saw Jaakko. He was saying goodbye to Emi and he is the last person to who I said goodbye with.

Now, I’m waiting for my flight to Washington DC to catch my flight to Croatia. It is going to be long traveling day for me and I am all alone.

Thank you everyone who wrote me small message and put inside of my envelope. That really gave me strength.

It’s so hard to be around 70 people for 6 months, not having minute of private moment, and now, after 6 months, sitting alone at airport and trying to figure out everything by myself.

- 16:12 - Comments (7) - Print - #

 09.12.2007., nedjelja

I'm on my way home

...only 2 days are sharing me from being at home.

It's been crazy last week and in few hours I'm saying goodbye to my last host family. Also, in few hours I'm having my final banquet with my cast mates and tomorrow morning most of us are going to say goodby to each other.

Yesterday was our last show and it was emotional show. When we were singing "We'll be there" audience took white tissues out and statred to wave with them around. I'm still not aware that we had our last show and that everything is coming to an end.

My flight leaves tomorrow evening and I'm not on the group flight so I'll be flighing home alone.

Prepare tissues when I come home.
- 12:24 - Comments (2) - Print - #

 05.12.2007., srijeda

White Bangor

It's still snowing here in Maine and Christmas spirit is starting to wake up in everyone.

Yesterday and today I was sign out because of the Galery thing which was secret thing for the cast, so I couldn't write anything about it yesterday.
Everything went perfect with Galery and we presented some artistic stuff from our cast members to everyone and we played some videos. It was really emotional and for me setting everything up and watching people going through galery was really special thing.

I think I'm totally in denial stage as I'm still living in dream that end is not coming closer and closer.

Anyways... tomorrow is new day and I'm really looking forward spending it with my cast, as we don't have so many days left.

Maine is really beautiful state and I love all the snow. Yesterday we actually went building the snowman outside for half an hour, but we ended up snow ball fighting. It was few of us, and than we saw bus coming with people from CI and we went to welcome them with a little bit of winter snow fight fun. I really enjoyed and I don't remember when did I had so much fun with snow last time.
- 22:44 - Comments (0) - Print - #

 04.12.2007., utorak

Snow blizzard in east coast

Yesterday we came to Bangor, Main. It’s a big state all the way on the north of east coast in US and since we entered Connecticut, snow was following us all the way to the north.

It was snowing soo bad that it was really hard to drive and we were late because of snow and they decided to give us morning free.

I’m living with young couple. My host mum was traveling with Up with People few years ago and they are both awesome. I don’t have roommates.

It’s morning here and outside is everything white… it looks really nice. My only concern at the moment is shoes. I don’t have winter shoes but I will try to survive.

One notice in Croatian:

Za sve koji čitaju moj blog i uvjek me pitaju zašto ne pišem na Hrvatskom jeziku, razlog je jednostavan.
Kao sudionica Up with People programa, moj blog link je na stranicama grupe s kojom putujem: www.castc2007.com
Kako mnogi ljudi posječuju stanicu našeg bloga, a time i moj blog, želja mi je bila omogučiti svim budućim participantima, kao i svima ostalima koji žele znati što se zbiva u naštoj Cast C grupi te sam odlučila pisati na engleskom jeziku. Engleski jezik je službeni jezik u Up with People te mi je želja da se više Hrvata uključi u Up with People.
Posjetite i prijavite se za jedinstveno životno iskustvo: www.upwithpeople.org

- 10:27 - Comments (1) - Print - #

 02.12.2007., nedjelja

Show day and host family day

Yesterday was show day and I was lucky one and I had to get up at 4AM to be ready at 5AM to start setting the stage up. We had super set up as our first show was about to start at 3PM, so that was the main reason why did we have to get up so early.

Both shows were amazing as this are almost our 2 last shows. Next city is going to be our last show and everyone are aware of the fact that end is coming closer and closer so everyone are very emotional.

I was feeling soo tired whole day and fact that we had to wake up at 4 didn’t help me much, especially waking up 3 days in row at the same time and going to sleep every 3 days around 11PM. I thought I’m not going to have any strength for the show, but green room always wakes me up and I always remember reason why am I doing this and why should I be all in when I’m performing in the show.

We were first one performing in Bernardsville High School auditorium as they just build it and we had that honor to perform first.

Today was host family day and Jaakko, my roommate, and me, we were sleeping in till almost 11AM and after that we had “branch” (or to translate: late breakfast, early lunch) and our host family had plans to take us to Thomas Edison laboratory and house, but unfortunately when we came, laboratory was closed because they are restoring it and house was closed because of bad weather.

Oh, yeah… speaking about bad weather… how could I forget to tell that we had our first Up with People snow today and when I woke up, everything was white. I would say that it was around 5-10cm of snow.

After that, they took us to national park where American Revolutionary War was happening. Just to tell you little bit about the history…war was taking place in 1775–1783 between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies on the North American continent and George Washington was commander in chief. It is huge hiking place, but we went to visit one of the houses that people gave for use to American army and there were people dressed up as Americans in that time and they told us some interesting stories about that time. I even tried how it was to be American solider in that time, wearing all different things with you which are heavy, together with old gun.

In the evening we went to visit Hindu temple and we had dinner there. It was south Indian food and it was amazing. I love Indian food. Tempe looks really nice and I would never before imagine that I would be in US and that I would be standing in front of amazing Hindu temple and have feeling like being in India. Who could imagine having such cultural experience?

When we come home, we just relaxed a little bit and started talking about everything.
- 23:58 - Comments (1) - Print - #

 30.11.2007., petak

United Nations Culture of Peace Forum day 2.

Today was long day and I wake up at 4AM to get ready until 5AM.
As we went half hour earlier today than yesterday, traffic was not bad at all and we reached New York around 7AM. At 8, we went to CBS and we were part of morning show again. It was freezing.

At 9AM we reached UN and our 2nd day of conference could start. Our first speaker was Terry Pearce, well known author of many bestsellers. He spoke about how we can make change first in ourselves to make change in others.

After that we had discussions with our color groups and we came back to hear few more opinions from few professors from Polytechnic University of New York and it was really interesting to hear about projects where new technologies, like Web, are bringing peace in communities.

After lunch we had speakers from Israeli and Lebanon, talking about Israeli-Palestine conflict. It was really interesting to hear their stories and how it is possible to resolve conflict in that area of the world.

At the end of our conference, we had a chance to discuss within our groups how we can make change in world and what can we do to make visible changes and after coming up with ideas we presented our ideas in front of everyone. I still cannot believe that we were presenting our ideas in one of conference rooms, sitting at real chairs where leaders of all over the world are sitting and discussing about similar issues and complex ones.

I was really satisfied with our 2 days in UN. I enjoyed every minute and I hope that ideas we talked about today are going to become real things on which every each of us is going to work on in future. World really need peace and only by accepting differences and working together we can make peace at world.

How did the conference and discussion look like?




Me presenting Croatia


Here are all photos from 2 days at UN.
- 22:56 - Comments (1) - Print - #

 29.11.2007., četvrtak

United Nations Culture of Peace Forum day 1.

Today’s day was amazing!! I still cannot believe what happened and it will take me some time to reflect what just happened today.

I had to wake up at 4.30AM to get ready and be on bus at 5.30AM. We went into traffic jam and before entering Lincoln tunnel which connects New Jersey and New York, we waited at least 20 minutes without moving anywhere.

When we come to New York, at one traffic light, one man come to our bus and said that he needs people for Morning show at CBS, so we went out of the bus and we were part of audience at Morning show at CBS TV station. We made signs and we talked with reporter and we singed Up with People song. It was really cool. Well, read carefully.
Tomorrow, Friday, we are coming back to CBS TV station and we are actually going to be on TV again so watch carefully from 7.30AM CBS morning show.

After visiting CBS, we went to visit International Youth Alliance house where we had breakfast and we talked about what they do, as they are founded by United Nations.

At 11AM we finally come to UN and we had to pass security check. After that we got our passes and we went to have lunch at UN cafeteria. I was feeling really international at that point of time.

After lunch, Iliana and me, we went to make our own personal UN postal stamps with our own pictures. Interesting fact about UN is that UN doesn’t belong to USA property… it is international territory so you need to have passport to be inside of UN.
Also, UN as international territory has their own post office with own postal stamps which are only valid inside of UN.

At 1PM we went for UN guide tour which was really cool. We went to visit chamber of Security Council and chamber of Economic and social council and at the end we visited The General Assembly Hall and I managed to find seating places for Croatia.

After the tour, we had opening of the forum and we had some really good speakers like Mr. Joseph Netakiratimana, Ambassador of Burundi, Dr. Hope White-Davis, WAFUNIF, Mr. Yiping Zhou, UNDP Director of South-South Cooperation and many more.
Tomorrow is for sure going to be exciting and interesting day at UN as tomorrow our conference is continuing.

Security Council


Economic and social council


The General Assembly Hall


Croatian place at The General Assembly Hall


Here you can see the rest of the photos from United Nations.
- 22:25 - Comments (7) - Print - #

 28.11.2007., srijeda

Update on Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

I have some photos from Macy's Thanksgiving Parade thanks to J.C., Manuel's cousin. Here you can see all I have so far.

Just to give you short remainder. Up with People Cast C 2007 was part of big Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York and we were marching for 2.5 miles on most popular streets in New York like 5th Avenue, Broadway street etc. Also, we were performing for national television NBC.
I was flag holder and I was proudly walking in New York with Croatian flag and in Croatian national costume.

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was started in 1924 and has continued as a highly-celebrated national kick off to the holiday season every year since. In 2005, more than 2.5 million people lined the streets to watch the parade, and another 44 million watched the balloons, floats, bands and performers on television. This year, more than 4000 volunteers will participate in the 2 ˝ mile parade.

Cast C 2007 - Up with People - in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade


Our balloon and cast and "Hello Kitty" balloon in fron of us


We are marching and greeting people in 5th Avenue


NBC performance and me in the first row with Croatian flag


My favourite balloon


Here you can also find some photos from professional Macy's photographer on www.GroupPhoto.com
- 23:00 - Comments (1) - Print - #