Jean-Marc took on the role of Toastmaster for the first time and explained that our theme for the meeting was Unreal/Real and suggested that on Martin Luther King day we consider how his achievements made the Unreal/real – by taking that idea of inequality and worked to make it a reality.
As an artist, Jean-Marc stated that part of his job is to make the Unreal/Real, by taking a concept and bringing it into reality.
Tim P. was our joke master and told a golf joke to get us all laughing.
Janice B. was our Ah/Grammarian and shared a special word to help expand our vocabulary – Neophilia – and while it sounds a little odd, it means “a love of novelty and new things”.
Jane gave her first speech and shared the history of the St. Cabrini girls home the new focus and the work taking place there to help the girls lead normal lives. The speech was very enlightening and helped us to know of the good work that is going on there.
Rob R. was our second speaker and discussed the value of time – he challenged us with the question – if you had only 86,400 seconds left – how would you spend your day? Consider this question on a daily basis in order to live your life to the fullest. Why is it that we think that we have unlimited time at our disposal? In light of the tragedy in Haiti, make the choices of how you spend your time with more thought and consideration.
Swarna was our Table topics master – it is at this point in the meeting that we all get an opportunity to practice our impromptu speaking skills.
The questions that Swarna challenged us with were:
What has been the biggest challenge you have ever faced – how have you faced it – and how have you overcome that challenge?
Many people spoke on the challenges of parenthood or education and other personal challenges that they have faced – it was an excellent question which not only helped us to practice our speaking, but to get to know one another better.
We then moved on to our speech evaluations for the night.
Janice P. evaluated Jane’s speech and offered her insight on what strengths she already has as well as what things can be improved in her future speeches.
Karen vK. Evaluated Rob R.’s speech and offered him suggestions for making the speech even better.
We then heard our reports from the timer Julie – who helps us to keep our meetings on time and then from our ah/grammarian Janice B. who helped us to recognize those verbal crutches we used during the meeting.
Then we all got to enjoy the snacks that the snack master brought for the meeting.
We were all happy to have Trishla join us again and happy to see Saul back after the holidays.
We look forward to our next meeting on February 1, 2010 and we hope that you will join us!!