ANZAC day

It was ANZAC day yesterday. It’s probably the most important national public holiday in Australia and New Zealand. And in the land of the long weekend, uni’s closed on Monday :)

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps that fought in Gallipoli Peninsula Turkey during World War I. Over 8,000 Australian soldiers were killed. The British plan was doomed to fail from the start and the Anzacs didn’t have a chance, although they weren’t aware of it when they went into war. The Aussie men actually competed of who gets to go to war.

I think it’s funny that in Australia attacking another country is considered to mark the birth of national consciousness. It’s like the US celebrating attacking Iraq. Well, maybe not exactly. To me it seems like the Aussies simply don’t have a special date to celebrate. They can’t really celebrate Australia Day because it is kind of controversial because of the position of the indigenous people. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good to commemorate the sacrifice of the Anzacs, but making it such a big deal at uni… Finland lost almost 4 times as many men in the Winter War. (See, I have been listening in class! – Correct me if I’m wrong…)Not that it's a competition..

Anyway, so Anzac day is about commemoration. Dawn services – held at dawn, the time of the original landing – are held across the nation. However, it seems that today ANZAC is more about footy. That is, Australian football. Footy is neither like soccer nor like American football. I heard that the ANZAC day footy match is even more popular than the final. I haven’t been to a footy match yet, but I’ve heard it’s like American football but without helmets or such, and that the guys are hot. After the games started, footy is all the locals talk about. And the newspapers. If the front page news is about something else than footy, it must be something huuuuge.

The weather is terrible today and I’m not planning to step outside anymore today. It’s cold and raining and the wind is CRAZY. I guess winter is coming… :( It pisses me off, I can’t imagine that I travelled 20,000 km to find myself in Australia with a weather exactly like in Finland in autumn!!!