Australian Race Day

Australian Race Day is April 7th, which means that the Royal Randwick Racecourse will be swarming with race horses and fancy dressed ladies in a week and a half from now. I've seen advertisements for it: it's like from the movie My Fair Lady, where the men wear neutral coloured suits and the women wear elegant, fancy dresses with stupendous hats. Definitely not an event I have something to wear to. It would be quite amazing to see actually, and I can't wait to take a peak when that day comes.

Horseracing or racing in general is pretty popular around here. I get the see the racecourse every morning and every night, to and from school. Since the big race is in less than 2 weeks, practice is needed for the horses/jockeys. If you wake up early enough, say around 7h30, like when I was going to school for my monday class at 8 am, I saw lots of jockeys and their beautiful horses practising, running around the track. Of course, from where I live, it's not the best view around and the horses are probably the size of bees when I look at them from here, but all the same it's an awesome sight.

It may be because my sister, Audrey, loves horses. I grew up with her around, and my parents and I were trained by her to spot every horse that crosses our life paths. I indeed had to take a picture of the horse-crossing sign near uni, and of the policemen on horseback in The Rocks. It's just something I do automatically without thinking, just like a dog automatically barks to the door when he needs to take a leak. Trained! But I am not mad at this at all. Seeing the horses run made me feel a sort of happiness of freedom... it's not that easy to explain a feeling, but it was definitely good. The kind of feeling maybe, that you'd feel in a large field in the sun and with a warm wind blowing in your hair, a sort of euphoria.

I honestly wasn't prepared to find myself in such a state of happiness as I watched the horses gallop along the racecourse, not incredibly fast, but with a good pace, getting a feel for the track. I do say thanks to Audrey, because I don't think I'd have been so happy to see horses.

But it's not just that... I guess seeing horses, and not being able to point them out as usual to her, isn't normal. Sometimes, I do think about home, but not so much in a missing sense, but of a pride sense. Because I love my family, and I do want to share certain things with them. But the fact that I can experience these joys, regardless of if my family is with me, still makes me feel incredibly lucky and happy. I love Australia!