This week I mentioned in two posts of mine, about the Harvest Day Festival I attended on Saturday. You can check them out if you scroll back a little bit. An event like this has been on my radar for some time and was hoping to catch one this year and the universe was nice to me and gave me the occasion to participate. However, I got more than I bargained for.

This event was not only about Harvest Day, but about celebrating it with everyone, the best way possible, meaning bringing citizens together for the same cause. When i say citizens, I mean all ages.

The event took place in Mediaș, a small Transylvanian city of only 47k citizens, where most of the needed cultural activities are needed. This event showed us, that there's development in that regard and I could not be happier.

As far as I could figure out, there were a few representatives of each school, presenting a dance or a song, depending on their talent, or lack of it :) These kids were so cute as they performed their well-rehearsed dance. Well-rehearsed dance is a very polite expression, as you can imagine, the teachers worked with what they had, whoever attended their class and not with selected talents. This is why synchrony was missing totally, but who cares. They were so cute trying to do their best for the public. It's possible this was their first performance at the big stage and in front of such a numerous crowd.

These teenagers were most likely from a secondary school, performing a dance based on Michael Jackson's song. There was more synchrony between the dancers and those in front were quite good.

This little girl I will never forget. We were standing in the crowd, watching the performances on stage and all of the sudden, this young lady showed up and offered to sell a pack to the lady in front of us. She told the lady the pack costs 1.5RON, and the money is for a good cause, meaning helping the school. How can you refuse such a sweetheart? So the lady in front of us took out her wallet and not having change money, she gave the girl a 10RON bill. She handed over the pack, which contained an apple and two or three walnuts, rushed away and after a couple of minutes she came back with the change. How can you not like moments like this?

I only managed to capture two of them, but they were three, all dressed up nicely for the occasion, with autumn garlands on their heads.

There were these little ladies, trying to perform a Romanian folk dance, but stepping to the beat of the music was a bit difficult :) The right side of the line was ok, but the left side somehow missed the steps :)

This was the most interesting performance of all.

What we witnessed was the second edition of the annual Quilin Gong games.

Qigong, chi kung, chi 'ung, or chi gung (simplified Chinese: 气功; traditional Chinese: 氣功; pinyin: qìgōng; Wade–Giles: ch‘i kung; lit. 'life-energy cultivation') is a system of coordinated body-posture and movement, breathing, and meditation used for the purposes of health, spirituality, and martial arts training. With roots in Chinese medicine, philosophy, and martial arts, qigong is traditionally viewed by the Chinese and throughout Asia as a practice to cultivate and balance qi (pronounced approximately as "chee"), translated as "life energy".

Qigong practice typically involves moving meditation, coordinating slow-flowing movement, deep rhythmic breathing, and a calm meditative state of mind. People practice qigong throughout China and worldwide for recreation, exercise, relaxation, preventive medicine, self-healing, alternative medicine, meditation, self-cultivation, and training for martial arts. source

The people you see on the stage are masters of the sports from different cities of Romania, performing specific moves, that help the body and mind.

While they were performing, a soft, relaxing music was aired, which was more than welcome, after all the extremely loud music we heard till then.

What was even better was seeing so many people engaged in the activity. On the square in front of the stage were the club members from all over the country. Look at the age of the participants. Look at the old lady in orange. I don't know how old she was but it was heartwarming to see her being part of the big family and performing the moves, which, by the way can make her days a bit more easier.

This is the category that usually doesn't have time for sports as they have so many things to do at home, taking care of the family, yet they were there, practicing the moves.

This lady was in a hurry to get to the stage as she was performing some Romanian folk songs.

This was a different performance, of the same genre.

When we arrived at the venue, the first thing we did was to check out the art workshop at the hall of the mayor's office as we were told there's a painting workshop. This is what we saw, but as soon as I took this photo, we were kindly told to step outside as the room was small and the kids needed space. I appreciate the gesture as the more people inside, the more difficult to focus.

After the workshop ended, these masterpieces were hung out to dry and to be seen by the public. Based on what I saw, there's a huge chance we won't have a new Picasso among the participants, but who cares? The idea is for them to try and have fun. The rest doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, even though there was room for improvement, I think the event was amazing, especially that they managed to mobilize so many people. I hope next year it will be better.

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