THE RETURN - Wednesday, January the 9th

Wednesday, January the 9th

It´s the return for the toasties, if you're one of those who could not come, you have done well, you would not have to sit. Here is a little summary of what happened in a broken English (I will do my best ;-)

Thomas Ronholt, who will now be the sergeant at arms of the new season, opened the first session of the year in front of a room full to the brim. Our President Marion, super enthusiastic wished us a happy new year and asked the guests who were there for the first time to íntroduced themself: they were not less than 10, probably a result of the effect "good new year's resolutions" .

Ana Villar, our toastmaster of the day, took the lead of the session and shared with us an emotional experience that she lived last week, performing in a the Ballet Barcelona show given to the children of San Pau Hospital for “los reyes”. She especially thanked us, toasties, to have encouraged her to participate in this adventure.
After a presentation of the proper conduct of the upcoming session, it's a guest who volunteered to tell a joke: a short one, as I like, and based on a play on words (on pronunciation of words). Oops, not necessarily easy to understand by all. Perhaps a lesson to take here? Anyway, thanks Mr Guest.

For the first time, our VPE in charge, Marisol Cifuentes decided to include in the agenda the presentation of the blogger, it is to be considered a way to promote this role, who worked until now in the shade. Good initiative.

        

Also for the first time, we saw a speech duet whose goal was to experiment the vocal variety. A dared exercise in which Christian Clottu and Agnieska Gut developed their idea of ​​success and happiness. Each one of them alternately illustrated moments of personal success (their decisions and accomplishments that ensued) and lessons learned of happiness from the observation of attitudes and behaviors in others.
At the time of the assessment, I got the confirmation that our English was a bit oxidized. Since the beginning of the session, I could feel how words of different languages were fighting eachother to finally leave the way for English words in the mouths of our non-English speakers.
Unlike the speech, the evaluations were made individually. Is it that which generated an incertain beginning from the evaluators? Perhaps, but once started, Rubén Martínez and Judith Permanyer respectively commented Christian and Aga performance giving specific issues and concrete recommendations to our 2 speakers.

David Smith came on stage to present us the Table Topics part, with a seasonal theme: Thomas came back to his eight years and discovered the great lie of his parents (Santa Claus didn't exist, it was them) . Andrea, converted in an Algerian girl, for the cause, found herself having to explain to her parents the strange Dutch tradition related to Santa's Little (Slave) Helper. For the third topic, David wanted a perspective of a third party to tell the tradition of the famous Catalan Tío-caga, and it is our super pro-active Mr Guest (I apologize for not having noted his name) who was volunteer to improvise something .

Ana who was, resolutely, in a gratitude spirit, thanked us again before handing over to General Evaluator of the evening Katia Georgieva and her technical team to open the feedback part of session.
As ah-counter, Edu Couchez, a little stressed has successfully mentioned the filler words of everyone within the allotted time, bravo. It is with a radiant smile that Sandra Guerrero submit its detailed report about how we used the time of the session, a topic very dear to me. Hanz Pubanz, our vigilant grammarian, has let us know with a lot of humor, our errors of syntax and pronunciation. Thank you for the quality of the assessment that I think, is necessary and useful for our multilingual group.

Finally, Katia went through each role of the session in detail, managing different states: hesitant at first, disconcerted by the cheeky humor of Hanz, and confident at the end to give her recommendations.

Assuming a technical role, it's an opportunity to start to experiment the art of public speaking, on a small scale, begin to practice the language with which you are least comfortable and quietly, gradually, improve yourself while participating in the improvement of the session.

In the last part of the session, and because life is life, always in motion, we held elections to replace some current members who have decided to quit their current rol. So, a big thanks to Carmen Pazos, my partner in the role of VPM, to Marisol Cifuentesour super active VPE, and to Sonia Rosales, our discreet secretary.
A warm welcome

  - to Katia Georgieva, my new partner as VPM

  - to our two VPE, and yes, a novelty, we now will have Agnieska Gut as VPE for english sessions and Ana Villar as VPE for spanish sessions.

  - to Andrea Burón, our new webmaster who will work in partnership with our VPR Judit Permanyer.

This concludes my personal report of the meeting, see you on next wednesday with our first blind session. Sure it´s going to be very a funny and creative session.

Lucie