Is there anyone here who heard about the Toastmaster International, don t remember if I mentionned it in my blog already but I am part of the Club Hellfire in Dublin since January this year.


What do we do during our 2 hours sessions: we have generally 4 speeches made by members of the club, then we have a debate pro/cons between two members, followed by the topicmaster who is one member of the club who asks questions to the audience who has 2 min to answer it, and to finish each speeches are evaluated by others members. Here you learn to do speech using different techniques and time allowed for it, which help you, at least me, to gain some self confidence delivering speech in front of an audience.
So I decided to share my speeches with you guys, and I hope i can have some feedback, you have to remember that i m french, and I m doing it in english so there is always areas of improvments ;)
My first one was the ice-breaker, you have basically 4 minutes to break the ice and introduce yourself to the Club, here is mine:

Madam Toastmaster, Madam President, Fellow toastmasters and welcome guests.
My name is Cecile, I was born in January 1980.
I am from France, and more particularly from the best part of it, which is south of France. The reason why it s because we have something call... shoot I forgot the name, it did happened in Ireland but rarely though... mmmm.. oh Summer... bright and shinny, great!

Anyway, my dad picked my name Cecile because of one of his favorite s singers, his name was Claude Nougaro. He made a song for his daughter which begin by... and please pardon me for my poor vocal performance.... Cecile .... ma fille! which means Cecile, my daughter.
I m glad he called her Cecile it could have been worst.

Speaking of my father he is a sales director, my mum is nurse, I have one brother, 4 years younger than me, who is a salesperson too.

Now, I think the second week when I came here, Florian and I got two toastmasters magazines, and the one that he gave me was so perfect for me, it was the special Humor issue, and I do love humor, I think I m quite funny well at least I make myself laugh which is a good start. And I will definitively live longer.
So in that magazine I read an interesting article called 'Want to be funny? You can t go wrong if you name that song", ... speakers will used several songs from a famous group or singer to introduce their speech so ... I figured it out that I can try it to describe myself, and because I m living in Ireland I choose U2 of course.
And here are the 5 songs that I selected.
First one: A day without me... It will be so boring, seriously after the ice breaker since you re going to know me, you will be looking forward every Tuesday.
2nd song: I still haven t found what i m looking for: ... true, I kind of figure it out but still ... I am not 100% sure of what will be my career path within the next 10 years, but ... i m working on it.
3rd song: Last night on earth....I think ... I will probably go to the best French restaurant ever and... kiss Brad Pitt.
4th song: Ocean....As i say i m from South of France, was born next to the sea, and I can t really live without it, I always have to go there not necessarelly for swimming, but just watch the sea to get rid of negative feelings, when u are angry, if u have never done that u should try once.
And last song to conclude my ice breaker: Indian Summer Sky, I love to travel, as a matter fact, 3 weeks ago I celebrate my 20th move in 27 years. Every time my dad has a promotion we had to move, so I ve been traveling from south, to north and then north to south again and then... out of nowhere my parents stop moving, I told them ...'are we going to stay in that city forever? OMG. I m going to be so bored ' so when I did my Master degree in Marketing and New Technologies i start moving on my on, from south to Paris, then I went to USA for a year to definitively improve my English, you would not have spoke to me before, then to Cork, Ireland and last year I moved to Dublin, and ... this year ...hopefully I will go to India with my work for two months and enjoy a beautiful summer there.
Madam Toastmaster.
Thank u