Wed. 2nd of February, 2011

Dear fellow Toastmasters and friends,

Once again, we’ve had an amazing meeting this week! First because, thanks to our dear President M.A., we had the priviledge to meet in a new and bigger room! Furthermore, we appeared all more organized: for example, the persons who were supposed to talk were sat at the front which made the whole reunion more dynamic. Peter was close to the door so that he could control everybody arriving late (and maybe reprimand them as well).

The most important was that I finally got my badge!!! I felt good and proud the whole session!! ;)

It’s Wednesday, the 2^nd of February. 8:00 pm, the reunion starts. Soon M.A. takes the floor and introduces cheerfully the guests, name by name. He follows with the presentation of the next contest, planned on the 23^rd of March, the roles to fulfill and that he will send an email to all members to keep trace of all participants. After a week, if all roles are not fulfilled, you should all start worry… He will pick names from his magical Christmas hat and we’ll have no choice but to participate!

As the Toastmaster of the day, Robert decides not to prepare for the role since he wants to improve his spontaneous leadership!

After explaining each roles and introducing the speakers (the only parts prepared by Robert, since he cannot improvise on this), the objectives are repeated.

We have 4 Speakers tonight:

- Tanja, a very good IceBreaker, with no sign of stress and fluid (Peter’s evaluation). She presents herself, Germany - her native country, many trips around the World, some difficulties faced on her professional career (creation of a phone application company which did not work), her promotion in Barcelona and the love she felt at 1^st sight. So now she is here, enjoying both Barcelona and the Toastmaster club!

- Liz’s speech is based on the “Slumdog Millionaire” movie. She exposes a well structured development using 3 “who wants to be a millionaire” questions related to her experience with the Senator Mr. Kennedy and 3 distinctive souvenirs: music, pets and science. What a surprise when she uses the “call a friend” option to respond to one of the questions: a brilliant Doctor of Science from Harvard who is no one else than Mr. Cormac, great fellow of our Toastmaster Club :)

- Stefan, another German friend, explains to us all the difference between the German and Spanish people in a meeting. I notice a lot of smiles from our Spanish crew… It probably means he is kind of right about that!

- And finally Djanira who is coming alive in front of us with her body and face gestures! She shares with us the story of her first days in Barcelona and how the difficulties that she experienced made her grow in terms of self-confidence, networking and marketing.

After the very constructive evaluations from Peter, Judit, Cormac and M.A., we finally arrive to one of the most exciting moments of the session (at least for some people…), the Table Topics. Tonight, it’s Marina in charge and she has chosen an interesting and useful topic: “the art of presenting news”… Thanks to you, Riccardo, Maria and Marisol, the information has been announced:

1) Gynecologist Riccardo announces to a father-to-be that he will not have 1 but 2 children and moreover not a babyboy - so that he can make him “socio” of the Barça - but 2 lovely girls! What a good strategy to present a club for girls in Barça where the growing babies can go later on.

2) Maria has to explain to parents that their child is a genius so he will never have a normal life like all the other kids of his age.

3) Marisol is in charge of delivering very bad news to a passionate ballet dancer that she is not going to enter the academy because of her size (a true story based on Marina’s sister) – the positive point is that she may easily become a model thanks to her beauty!

It’s now M.A.’s turn to announce his “interesting” news: from now on, if we don’t have volunteers for the Table Topic, we’ll use – again – the Christmas hat, full of the names of everyone with no role, and – again – no choice but to “talk” in front of the crowd.

Joan wants to have a word too in this exciting moment of giving news and presents a potential future event: a GoCar day! Thanks to Paty who can give the club a good discount, we will be able to discover our Barcelona city in a new style: with wheels and a voice coming out a little yellow car, describing the neighborhood.

At the very end, M.A. asks a volunteer to write on the blog… Because I am kind of scared of the diabolic Christmas hat, I volunteer and raise my hand. I am now in front of the screen, a white empty word page, relying on my memory in order to write down a summary of the session… Next time, please M.A., ask for volunteers at the beginning so that we can take some notes!!

Cheers everyone and see you next week!

Yours, The blogger of the day