A word from President Dan

It was quite a week for our club.

We completed our club officer training on Tuesday, which gives us points in Toastmaster World.

The Tall Tales contest was a BLAST! We had 7 awesome speakers with Mitchell Notarangelo being the winner with his tale of killing the wolf beast. Tall Tales alone was worth a night out for fabulous entertainment.

Michelle Liu entertained us with a novel Table Topics where we had to connect two things into a story.

We had 4 guests and a visit from Patrice Esper of the Ajax Pickering Toastmaster Club.

Matthew Bryan is reminding us all to bring unwanted clothing to donate to the needy in Durham. So if you would all check your closets for clothes… An often forgotten but much needed item is pairs of socks.

Wednesday is our pot luck Christmas meeting. The first half of the meeting will be as usual, minus the business session. Before break Todd Morgan will be giving us a special Christmas speech. At break we will eat play The White Elephant Gift Game, and socialize until 9PM or so… This will be an awesome time for us to get extra socializing and get to know our Toastmaster Family better. We are going to have the…

White elephant gift exchange

A white elephant gift exchange, Yankee swap or Dirty Santa is a party game gifts are exchanged during festivities. The goal of a white elephant gift exchange is to have fun with gifts.

The term white elephant refers to impractical gifts that cannot be easily disposed of. The phrase is said to come from the historic practice of the King of Siam (now Thailand) giving rare albino elephants to courtiers who had displeased him, so that they might be ruined by the animals’ upkeep costs. While the first use of this term remains a matter of contention among historians, one theory suggests that Ezra Cornell brought the term into the popular lexicon through his frequent social gatherings as early as 1828.

Rules Each participant supplies one wrapped gift, usually of similar value. The gifts are placed under the tree and we will take turns selecting them. The first person opens a wrapped gift, and the turn ends. On subsequent turns, each person has the choice to either unwrap a new present or to steal another’s. When a person’s gift is stolen, that person can either choose another wrapped gift to open or can steal from another player. To avoid never-ending circles, each gift can only be stolen once per turn. The game is over when everyone has a present.

The recommended gift value is $10

See you all on Wednesday

Dan
dan.white@taxauditsolutions.com