Speaker's Corner

Finally, the day arrived for Speaker's Corner, which we have been preparing students for since early January.  We have to say, we have the most amazing, wonderful, delightful students!!  They were awesome to spend the day with, and we were so proud of how much they learned, how hard they worked, and how much improvement they made during the past month!!  We have terrific kids at EGJT!!  

Our day in pictures, starting out waiting for our train ......

Thursday morning, bright and early, we met Pat'ka and our 8 students at the train station.  Everyone was excited on the way to Žilina for Speaker's Corner!

We took the trolley from the train station to the bilingual school where the competition was to be held.  (Tim bought fresh, hot pirožky for everyone at the little kiosk that we love!)

EGJT students and Pat'ka on the walk to the school from the trolley stop.  

We ran into the Fredells (American lectors in Bratislava) in the morning, since we were all judges and had students entered in the competition.  It was great to see them again!  :-)

Lenka, one of our WONDERFUL students, made decorated Valentine cookies for all of us, personalized individually, including her "th" reminder for pronunciation!!!  :-)   They were so cute, very delicious, and it was so sweet of her to do all that work!!  

We had a busy day - Tim and I judged speakers in different rooms/categories all morning, then everyone had lunch in the school cafeteria.  (Our school lunches are better than at either of the other two schools we visited this week!!)   They announced the winners, and we had several students just barely miss out of 3rd place, and one who won her center and made the finals.  

Waiting for finals to begin in the auditorium.

More of our students awaiting finals!

Katarina giving her speech in the final round of competition.

YAY --- she won second place!!  Congrats to Katarina!!  :-)

Outside the train station in Žilina after the competition, with some time to kill before our train ride back to Liptovsky Mikuláš.  This was supposed to be the "crazy picture", but evidently Pat'ka was the only one who understood that term - LOL!!!  :-)  

This is the beautiful square in Žilina, which we have now visited in three different seasons.  We can hardly wait to see it in the springtime!   :-)

On the train ride home.   :-)  

It was a long and tiring, but very fun day!   :-)

Such awesome smiles from our sweet students!!   Congratulations to all the EGJT Speaker's Corner competitors for doing such a terrific job!!