Tellers and Tales at Timp - Baptism by fire

There are only a handful of better ways to spend an early morning than sitting in a room filled with storytellers, munching on strawberry marzipan muffins, sipping hot chocolate and listening to Donald Davis. Doesn't sound that bad does it?... Especially when he talks about why storytelling is important - scratch that, essential - for human beings and children in particular (yeah, we all love kids).
So this is how my second day started at the Timp Conference. I was much less sleepy and much more nervous (you would have been too if you had to do a workshop after hearing all those performances the day before...) and ready for learning more...
For the first session I chose Nannette Watts' workshop about coaching young storytellers and organizing youth storytelling events. My main reason for that was that I'd like to start something like that when I go back home (I have a whole castle for a setting... seriously), and one has to learn from the pros... and pro she is, with lists and tips and advice and handouts, and lots of games and fun (besides she is a bundle of energy, always moving and moving - yeah, dance major :D - reminds me of a hummingbird). I can't wait till I can try all the games and activities she taught us... (poor kids will be so exhausted XD ). And I also bought her book and it's gonna be very useful (and no she did not pay for this post XD )
Box lunch, enough said, and the show was rolling again: the afternoon performance was by the Resonance Story Theater (aka Wendy, Karla, Nannette and Steffani). They told us in advance that their show was designed for kids - and then they turned us all into laughing and yelling and squeaking 5th graders for almost an hour... there was drumming and singing and lots of funny faces, and a pleasant amount of audience participation... yay!
And there was only one session left. Because Wendy swore that the best workshop of her life was David's The Storyteller's Compass, I asked him if he would let me participate for the first half (of the 3-hour double session). And he did, and he did it with a smile (yay). It was a small and friendly group - the whole thing started out as a game of words and ideas, and soon I realized we were actually learning, no not really learning, discovering new things. David is a good teacher, he lets do draw your own conclusions... I felt a bit sorry I had to leave halfway through, but oh well, I had my own workshop to do...
Really, it's not my task to write odes about my own session... all I can say is that I had fun, enjoyed telling the tales, and... ow this won't work. Okay, one more try.
The whole experience of sitting in a friendly circle with people who came to listen to my tales; who asked me questions even before it started (even the day before) and told me in advance how curious they were; to see their faces and eyes while I was telling my stories, and the way they listened even to the Hungarian parts they could not understand (they could not, but they did, that's what Donald taught us...). It was just plain amazing. I was not nervous, I was not lost in focusing - I just had fun sharing something that is my own with people from halfway around the world...
The stories behaved well enough, Fehérlófia got the best telling I ever had in English so far; I had some surprises though - I'd never realized before that a castle spinning on a duck leg must sound hilariously funny for non-Hungarian people... Well, it was over before I realized it, and... I felt like an official international storyteller who had just presented her workshop at the Timpanogos Storytelling Conference...
What can I say? Yay!