Sant Jordi, Books and Roses

Parles Català? In English it means do you speak Catalá? Well I don´t, but I managed to pass through the rain to last week's Barcelona toastmasters club meeting. Obviously, I was wet when I arrived. I believe my condition inspired them to choose the word of the day “Mullat”. Mullat is a catala word meaning “Wet”.  

Cormac was the toastmaster of the day. He quickly described the program for the day in a mixture of Catala, Spanish, and English. We had two great speeches. Cormac introduced the first speaker Jesus Salillas in his almost flawless Catala accent. “Diaris de Sant Jordi, Jesus Salillas, Jesus Salillas Diaris de Sant Jordi”. Jesus objective was to deliver an entertaining dramatic talk about an experience or incident; He must use vivid imagery, characters and dialogue and deliver the talk in an entertaining manner. He nailed it. Although I didn´t understand Catala, I felt the strong emotion he transmitted when he delivered the speech and the way he dramatized every sentence was just amazing.

The second speech was delivered by our own Robert Ferrer, “Cercant Cavallers al 2013” another great speech. The purpose of the speech was to persuade and inspire, align the audience goals with speech objective, deliver a motivational speech and influence an audience to a specific action. By the time he had ended the speech, I was transfixed.

We moved on to the most exciting part of the toastmaster session, The Table Topics. With a round of applause we welcomed the table topic master of the day, Lorena. She presented three of her most cherished works, a book she has just written and two paintings which the volunteers were asked to give or offer their opinion. 

The session was almost coming to an end and it was now the turn of the general evaluator David Sanchez to give report of how the session went. He called on his team the Time keeper and the grammarian to give their report.

Soon afterwards, Cormac took over to wrap up the session.

It was a great experience for me to be part of the session. After the session, if you would ask me again Parles Catala? I would answer you, Una Mica. Cheers!