Nov 16, 2021 Theme: "Idioms"

“It takes two to tango” and that is what Lingo Advanced Communicators and Fabulous Facilitators Toastmasters Clubs did on November 16/21 as we introduced ourselves with our favorite “Idioms.” Toastmaster of the evening, “Action Hero” Cherry C, announced a three way tie for the best idiom:  Oksana N, anything to do with time, e.g. time flies; Gary T, with “a Piece of Cake” which was also the word of the day, because he likes food; and Cam B, with “Raining cats and dogs” which may have been preferable to Edmonton’s weather then.

There were two speeches: 1) Gary’s L2 re Effective Body Language and its importance (don’t shrug your shoulders unless you really mean it) and 2) Xi X’s L4 elective: Managing an Online meeting re “Unconscious Bias” which I am sure everyone has either experienced or has been guilty one time or other.  It was a great discussion complete with breakout rooms and reporting back. Speech Evaluators Eileen S and Lochlan K gave good suggestions to enhance the speeches.

The evaluators, lead by General Evaluator Edith B, were diligent in fulfilling their roles: Peter H as grammarian/Ah counter, although speaking of body language, we saw him cringe when members said “Back to you.” Lynn B, who was flashing timing lights (although this time she was not sitting in the dark) as we tried without success to pack a lot into an hour, and Oksana as Quizmaster, who tried without success, too, to stump us.  All in all this joint effort had lots of “Food for thought.” It was “a piece of cake.”  

Fabulous Facilitators meets again on November 23/21 at 7 pm MST and Lingo Advanced Communicators on December 7/21 at 7 PM MST.  Zoom in for one of these or both. Peter H, DTM, Division C Director and 👑👑👑 award recipient reminded club officers of the first winter COT on Saturday November 20/21. 

Blog written by Edith B, VPPR for both clubs

Nov 2, 2021 Workshop: ReEngage, ReDisscover and ReIgnite

It was not all fun and games like our Halloween meeting, nor was it meant to be.  Lingo Advanced Communicators zoomed into our ninth(9th) year by presenting a workshop entitled “ReEngage, ReDiscover, and ReIgnite” your Toastmaster (TM) energy. Every member of the club and guest Violet were present to “rekindle” their TM juices. Sgt at Arms Edith B introduced our TM for the evening, Cherry C as a living example of how TMs helped her in her career to go from an accounting clerk to going after deadbeats.  Throughout the evening, besides “ReEngage, ReDiscover, and ReIgnite”, these words were heard several times and attributed to Toastmasters: “confidence and competency.”

We had three presentations to further connect the dots: Eileen S talked about “Why Toastmasters?”, Dan Mc, gave a presentation on the overall value of the TM program, and Estella M spoke on setting and achieving goals. These presentations were of varying lengths but Eileen won best Speaker with her 5-7 minute speech.

It was a full evening so we did not have Tabletopics but the evaluations were thorough as led by General Evaluator Xiao X. Rhys D evaluated Eileen’s speech, Craig B as grammarian kept track of the word of the day, and Edith was kept busy as timer. I do believe many were “reEngaged,” did “reDiscover,” and became “reIgnited.”  And with that we look forward to our next event on Tuesday November 16/21 at 7 pm where Eileen will lead the discussion on “International Day for Tolerance.”  Encourage a friend to zoom along with us.  Zoom link 858 0729 3647 Pass Code 342694.

Sent from my iPad. Edith Baraniecki (vacation at Orlando, Florida)