Monday, July 21, 2008

Advantures in Kiev

If you missed our trip on July 6th to Kiev - Annual Picnic of all Ukrainian Toastmasters, then you missed some good stuff!

This has been our first trip outside of Lviv. Vera Viter (still as an Area Governor) invited us to this picnic that they have once a year for the Ukrainian TM clubs. And it was quite an advanture for us.



First of all the weather was not very friendly: it rained cats and dogs all morning. However, we decided to break the rain! After a good breakfast at the Puzata Hata place we headed for Pirogov's museum--where the picnic was planned to be.


The picnic started from the formal meeting. This was my very first time when i had to give a speech evaluation to a girl i never met before in front of 60 people. Kind of challenging....I was nerveous...Lena also had a difficult job--Ah-counting all of the participants!!!
Besides the general meeting procedure, they had an Auction led by Levon Petrosian (an experienced Toastmaster). If not for him, the Auction would have been very boring. Also i think it was way too long. People started to loose the interest. Sasha Sheremet even bought cool headset and some CDs. This way he donated to the TM area budget. I realized that the Auction is a great way to raise money for our club as well. We should try it.

All who wanted to have fun participated in team games. Some of them were so tought that i started to fear for my health:)
Since the seconod half of the day was warm and sunny we took a walk around that amaizingly large museum on the open air. Besides, it was the "Ivana Kupala" holiday that gathered hundreds of people to celebrate it in more or less traditional way: singing, dancing, jumping over the fire, etc.

Meeting new people, gathering tons of ideas for our club, making friends - made our trip interesting and useful. Inspired by this, I want to organize a picnic for our Lemberg Toastmasters in a nearest future. Hope the people will support it!!!