History Lesson and ANZAC Memorial Service

So this week begins Week 9 of uni and surprisingly enough, I'm actually going to have to start doing work! I have three papers due in the next month and a half or so, and while I'm not overly concerned about them, I haven't started doing research at all for them. So, I'm going to have to put off reading The Two Towers and Return of the King until I got a little more work done. I started The Fellowship of the Ring last Monday and was finished by Wednesday, but in that time period I didn't do much else except read and seeing as how I really need to start doing homework, I can't afford to start reading just quite yet. This does bring my "Books Read in Australia" toll up to 7 - the most leisure reading I think I've done in a semester ever. Anyway, reading is not what this post is about, so I'll get started with Australian stuff.

April 25 is called ANZAC Day here in Australia and I'm guessing New Zealand, although I don't know how big of a deal it is for them. I know a lot about ANZAC from my history class, so be prepared to read a little bit about Australia in World War 1.

ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and back when men were needed in World War 1 the two countries for the most part were kept together. So because the British like to think themselves quite superior to everyone else, they sent the ANZAC forces to Egypt for additional training because they did not think that they had been sufficiently trained in their native countries. I suppose this is actually probably true, but I like to think of the British as pompous. The Aussies were chillin' in Egypt, generally being drunken, loud, promiscuous soldiers when finally they were called up for duty. Now, they were all under the impression they were going to the Western Front in France, except no, they were being sent to Gallipoli in Turkey. There is quite a bit of scandal surrounding the decision to attack Turkey - Churchill agreed to send men to fight in Gallipoli even though he was only sending about half of the soldiers that it was suggested was needed to win and further they sent ANZAC in using old tourist maps as their battle maps. I think the best explanation is a comment Lenin made which has been gathering some credence - the Gallipoli campaign was always meant to lose, so that way Russia would not have a gateway to the sea and therefore gain that waterway.

So now that you know some history, the Aussies landed on Gallipoli on the 25 of April. As it was explained to me by someone else, Gallipoli to the Australians is kind of like Normandy Beach to us. Basically, it's really a big deal. So, ANZAC day commemorates Australia's big entrance into war and the realization of her national identity as well as remembers those men who gave their lives for Empire. Wollongong celebrates this by having a 4:45 am MORNING SERVICE. That is right, I woke up at 4 am to go to their memorial service. There were about 10 or 12 of us from International House that ended up going to the service - all Australians except for a Canadian and me and my friend Rachel (we're both American, clearly). It was held down by their war memorial and just had some local military personnel, some talks, some songs (including the Australian National Anthem, which says Australia 5 times!), a bugle song (it wasn't Taps, but I still liked it) and that was pretty much it. It lasted around half an hour. There was to be a parade later on, but I went back to my dorm and fell asleep. Overall, I was a little let down but I think that had something to do with me expecting it to be something like Memorial Day back home. I don't know how it happened, but I think that I have more of an appreciation now of what American soldiers died for and I'm a little sad that I'm going to miss Memorial Day in good ol' West Grove.

Because this post is kind of long, I think I'm going to leave off for now and I'll write up about my trip to Melbourne (I went this past weekend) tomorrow. I'll also go ahead and make an effort to put up pictures from Melbourne, just because I'm making you wait to read about the trip.