Travel Talkers Toastmasters

The format of a demo meeting for a new club is a bit different from a regular Toastmasters meeting. The only required roles and segments are a Toastmaster for the meeting, a speaker, a speech evaluator, a Table Topics segment, a timer and an Ah counter. With Travel as the overall theme of the club, we modified this a bit to add the fun role of Destination Master and renamed the Table Topics segment to Travel Topics.

The zoom format allowed everyone to choose travel locations for their backgrounds. We enjoyed the view of the 12 Apostles in Melbourne, Australia, chosen as the background by the Toastmaster of the meeting, Raji, and the overlook at Stavanger Norway, chosen by the speech evaluator, Solarzar.

Our Destination Master, Kalpana, was tasked with describing a city or location in detail without revealing the name. All of the meeting participants then sent their guesses via private chat to the Destination Master. Kalpana’s hints included, multiple airports, many universities and colleges, skyscrapers, deep-dish pizza, and the public sculpture known as the bean. The correct answer? Chicago!

As the speaker for the meeting, I gave a short speech on a travel adventure I had in Bangkok. My trip to Bangkok was supposed to be just an airline connection from Manila on my way to my final destination,Tel-Aviv. But the plane arrived late and I was not able to meet the 4 hour security clearance requirement of the airline. I had to spend the night in Bangkok and take a flight the next night to Israel. The airline arranged for a hotel and the next morning I was determined to see as much of Bangkok as I could in the next 12 hours before my late night flight.  I booked an all day tour with a guide to take me to explore the Grand Palace and the Wat Pho Temple with the reclining Buddha, plus a trip to the gem district where I saw amazing gemstones and watched artisans create beautiful jewelry. I also sampled yummy grilled street food and ate delicious fresh fruit.  By the time I needed to go back to the airport I was exhausted, but happy.  I didn’t mind the 4 hour wait in security or the 10 ½ hour flight to Tel-Aviv.  The unexpected trip made me want to return to Bangkok someday to explore more.

Table Topics, or in the case of our club, Travel Topics are an opportunity for all the meeting attendees to give a short 1-2 minute speech in response to a travel related question or prompt. For the demo meeting, Kalpana was also our Travel Topics master and she prepared 5 questions for the meeting. Meghan respond to a question about travel tips to help you in difficult situations with the tip to grab the business card of the hotel or have a printout of the hotel address in case the taxi drivers can’t communicate with you in English. This advice was based on her experience of trying to get back to her hotel in Shanghai and the taxi driver did not understand her and she only had the address on her phone. Elma told us she prefers to travel by boat, when she was asked to give her travel preference. Seems there is more room on board a boat for souvenirs and gifts than on an airplane. 🙂 Stephen shared his memory of his first airplane trip when he was a teenager, traveling to New York to be reunited with his Dad who he had last seen when he was three. Liz responded to the question, “why do you travel?” She told us that she travels to see new things, places, scenery, eat new foods, get out of her comfort zone and just “get out there and go!”

Join us Thursday, October 6th from 6:30-7:30 pm Pacific time for the next meeting of Travel Talkers. The meeting theme will be Expectations. I will be the Toastmaster of the Meeting, Stephen will be the speaker, Meghan will be the Destination Master and Elma will be the Travel Topics Master. Meeting link: https://tinyurl.com/TravelTalkersZoomLink

See you there! We look forward to hearing your Travel Topic responses.

Helen Josephine, Travel Talkers