HARMONY DAY CELEBRATION AT TAFE

Harmony day is a day to celebrate a commitment to harmony and mutual respect in a cultural diverse nation. Every year this event held across Australia on 21 March. This year St. George TAFE celebrated harmony day on 24 March. This was my first Harmony day celebration. It was really a very pleasant experience.

On that day we had our regular class. In the class our teacher Marion gave us some stickers and badges to wear. The sticker was the symbol of harmony day. After that Marion taught us some songs which we were to sing in the Harmony Day seminar. Around 10.30 am we went to a hall room in Building-A. When we entered the hall room we saw that there are many students from different courses of TAFE. Some teachers and staff of TAFE were also there. The hall was crowded with so many people and they were from different countries. At that time I was felling so much excited because we all were from different background but we were here with harmony and peace. In front of the hall room there was sound system and in the back there were some tables full of different types of foods made by TAFE students and staffs. We also made some food for this occasion but there were no room in the tables to serve our food so we kept our food for launch time. The room was full of people and we did not get chance to sit there so we stand in the back of the hall room. Our teacher Marion was also with us. There was some arrangement of tea and coffee at the back as well. We had have some coffee. After that we took some photos of each other.

Around 11.00 am the program started. An employee of TAFE gave an introductory speech. After that some of the TAFE students gave speech on their experiences about being in Australia. After these speeches we sang three songs. They were-a) Australia's National Anthem, b) I still call Australia home, and c) I am Australian. The lyrics of the songs were shown by a projector in the front of the room. After finishing these songs some of the students sang some songs in their own language. There were songs in Russian and Chinese. One of our classmate Olga who is from Russia joined some Russian students singing a song in their language. A Russian woman danced on this song. All of us enjoyed that very much. After this the seminar was finished and the employees of TAFE invited us to have some snacks. There were many items of food. We tasted some of them and they were delicious.

When we finished our eating here, another harmony day celebration party was waiting for us in the classroom. Around 12.00 pm we went back to our class. Here we served our foods that we made for this occasion. We all tested each others foods and all of them were very testy. This time we were asking each other the recipes of the dishes. The party finished at 12.30 pm.

We all enjoyed this Harmony Day celebration very much. It was really a great experience for us especially for the students who were celebrating it for the first time. To me it will be one of the memorable days of my life.