~Thoughts of the Day
2005-01-26 - 1:59 p.m.

Happy Australia Day everyone. Good ol' Google has Ularu and the Aussie flag on their site. *patpats Google*

I'm curious: do you people in other countries celebrate your national days? That is, do you personally get excited on your national days, have special traditions with friends and family or take part in community activities to celebrate?

Because I don't. There is usually some big Australia Day concert, and many families have a tradition of having a BBQ on Australia Day - it's really the unofficially official Australia Day tradition. It's what everybody associates with Australia Day. Because today's supposed to be around 36C, I suspect that the beaches will also be packed. I'm glad I have air conditioning!

I'm also, actually, quite glad the holidays worked out like this, I think. Most other states don't go back to school til Monday. Of course, I would have loved a whole extra week. In fact, I think I really needed it both physically and just for getting stuff done. However, going back to school yesterday and doing all of my furniture moving and so forth, especially as I wasn't used to getting up that early, left me exhausted yesterday. Despite going to bed around midnight when it was still about 28C inside, I actually slept like a log once I got to sleep and didn't have as much trouble getting to sleep as I had been. I had the fan on me all night and only a light sheet over me (I find it hard to sleep without the security and comfort of at least a sheet), and I woke up a little before 9am feeling pretty refreshed. I'm not bursting with energy because I am still tired from yesterday and not sleeping wonderfully this past week, but I feel like my sleep did me good and I got up happily, without hanging around in bed for too long and without feeling like I'd been wrenched from sleep and left with a heavy head.

If I'd had to go straight into teaching the kids the day after returning to work, I think I would've been really run down. As it is, I know I'll be exhausted on Thursday and Friday, but at least it's only two days to get through and nobody will expect proper work. When I start with the kids on a Tuesday, I end up feeling that I'm not ready to start launching straight into the proper curriculum and I know that they really do need a day or two to settle back into a school routine, but I therefore end up with almost a whole week with not much proper work done. This way, we'll have two days of settling in and getting our begining-of-year business out of the way and then we can launch straight into a normal school week on Monday.