Australia Day

I know I'm a bit late in blogging about it but January 26th was Australia Day! When I was at my culture camp from the 4th to 8th of January in Los Angeles all the other aussie exchange students were talking about all the australian memrobilia they'd brought to celebrate Australia day. I on the other hand had completely forgot and didn't have so much as a flag to celebrate so quick smart I skyped my mum and told her to send me as much aussie 'junk' as she could find. I say junk because most of the merchandise sold to celebrate Australia day is made as cheaply as possible and usually found int he $2 stores (not 99c stores like they have in the US!). Luckily on about the 23rd of January I received a box from Australia filled with tooth-pick sized flags, balloons, napkins, stubbie holders, flashing and non-flashing aussie badges plus an aussie flag themed hacky-sack, a giant flag, bandana, wallet and a cd of classic bush songs! That parcel made me grin from ear to ear, never before had I felt so happy to be surrounded by tacky aussie merchandise. I've labelled this year, 'The Year Of No Year'(but those of you in the know will know that technically the year of no fear was last year but it's really applicable to me for 2011) so I knew I had to do something wacky for school even though I didn't know many people at that stage. My mum had also sent me a set of sweatbands and a matching headband with the Aussie flag on it so I knew I had to suck up the courage and wear them. I also wore one of the flag badges and an aussie rubber wristband and took a bag filled with the hundred odd tooth-pick flags to pass them out to people at school. Although I looked totally crazy I had such a blast and have never felt more patriotic and proud of my country in my life- one girl asked me what was with my get-up and when I explained what day it was she said "Well I never wear anything for Mexican day"! Everyone enjoyed getting their tooth-pick flags and I gave them to a couple of my teachers who stuck them on the classroom walls. My choir teacher was the most excited by the small gesture her face lit up when I handed her the flag, I totally made her day!

After school we had a bit of an Australian day bash. I put on the cd with the bush songs, we blew up balloons, used the giant flag as the tablecloth and set out the napkins. Me and Hannah, my exchange sister played a little game of hacky sack whilst our host dad set up the barbeque. We had a lot of trouble finding some decent sausages. They had everything but a decent beef or pork sausage at the supermarket, they had chicken sausages, hot dogs, big fat italian sausages, bratwurst, sausages that were sealed up in air tight packaging and then there were breakfast sausages. Why an earth you would need a specific type of sausage for breakfast is beyond me but they were the closest thing we could find. I was pretty chuffed being in charge of the BBQ and turning the sausages, I've never really done it before and I felt so Australian! Unfortunately the sausages weren't quite the same as real Australian ones but I really didn't care as our little Aussie feast reminded me of home and I was as happy as pig in mud! I even made Anzac biscuits that day too which we pigged out on for dessert, they're like oatmeal cookies but 10 times better. It was a shame about the sausages so I'm going to see if I can get an Aussie recipe off a friend for homemade sausages but other than that I had the best day out!