Because good times are worth remembering, here is what happened at our December 10th meeting. Somehow I can’t put into words the atmosphere, laughter, good cheer, and the overall fun that we had and while I know it is a cliché, but you had to be there (and hopefully you’ll join us for our famous Christmas Meeting in 2015, if not sooner). We had two guests from other clubs to joining in our festivities.
Michael S was our Christmas Master, leading us through the evening. The restaurant did some nice decorating for Christmas and Michael provided some other nice touches in our normal meeting room. He started us off with an opening round where we could choose to answer “What are your goals for 2015?”, “What does Christmas mean to you?”, and “What are you expecting tonight?” Larissa and Ingo told us a joke about a letter to Santa.
Regina, from Darmstadt Toastmasters gave the first prepared speech “Feed…back !” (project #1 from the “Speaking to Inform” manual). She told us how feedback is everywhere in life but as evaluators that we want to make sure that person being evaluated is motivated and excited about giving their next speech and not demotivated because of an evaluation that doesn’t tell the speaker what they did well and what they specifically improve upon in their next speech.
The second prepared speech was from Andrea, with her speech, “Rudolf, The Red-Nosed Reindeer – The Original Story” (project #4 from the Storytelling manual). Andrea channeled her Rudolfia from Christmas past, wearing antlers and a blinking red nose. She told us how none of the other reindeer would let Rudolf join in any reindeer games and how he saved the day on that foggy Christmas. Andrea ended up doing a speech and a half because dinner arrived in the middle of her speech, but this played well into evening as we were all able to enjoy a nice glühwine and many of our nosed became a little redder (like Rudolf’s nose).
Michael S did a PowerPoint Karaoke based on a well-known Christmas Story. I believe that this is the first time that the club has made use of PowerPoint Karaoke and led to some interesting results, certainly the Christmas story has never been done quite like this before!
Regina H led us through some Christmas Karaoke, starting off with Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and leading us through several other classic Christmas songs.
Patrizia was our Table Topics Master and she presented several scenarios related to the Charles Dickens Classic “A Christmas Carol”. You have to wonder how old Scrooge would have made out with our ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future?
After our break, we were visited by the Christkind (Regina K) and a Santa Apprentice (Rita). Regina was showing Rita the ropes on present distribution and had all of us in stiches. We all learned that it isn’t easy being the Christkind or Santa.
Our Evaluation part of the evening was less conventional, as Michael S, said “We can’t evaluate Christmas, now can we?. Martin mentioned in his Evaluation of the evening that much like this evening, 2014 has been a very memorable year with a lot of creativity shown by the club and a lot of fun has been had be all regardless if we had a small cozy meeting or one packed with members and guest like tonight. Darryl turned “The 12 Days of Christmas” into a Toastmasters and Word Weavers experience (read the text here), I hope we all can enjoy these gifts beyond the 12 days of Christmas. Patrizia ended the evening with a reading of “Twas the Night before Christmas”
We wish all the best for you and your families and friends over the Holidays. We hope that 2015 is a great year for all of us and we look forward to seeing you in 2015.
Thank you to Darryl for the meeting summary.