The USA has Mardi Gras. The UK has Pancake Day.
The UK also has Robbie Burns night, which my friends and I celebrated by cooking an entire backpack full of haggis (cooked without the backpack, obviously), and reading poetry by Robert Burns (such as the famous poem he wrote to a haggis. This guy is widely loved and adored throughout the country).
The next day was Australia Day. Since I live with people from all over the world we celebrated that with more food and a giant inflatable crocodile.
Tonight will be a mix of Lithuanian food (for Lithuanian independence day) and pancakes. This will probably culminate in watching the Olympics. Winter Olympic coverage in the UK follows the same basic formula for every sport. They profile the athlete(s) who are from the UK, and follow them until they are disqualified in one of the preliminary rounds, and then they continue to follow the competition into the final rounds just for the hell of it because theres fuck-all else to do.
At least its not like the last summer Olympics which I watched in Spain. Coverage was entirely focused on the sports Spain was good at (read: tennis, basketball, and sometimes fencint...ALL THE TIME).
However the Olympics has been in conflict with the Six Nations rugby competition. This is a tournament between Englad, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and Italy. The Scottish team never does well, and is usually in competition with Italy for the team which comes in dead last. Though Scotland is so used to losing at this point that the Scottish fans are at least good-humored about the whole thing. The English, on the other hand, see losing as a national tragedy. Though when teams beat Scotland they celebrate by doing things like getting drunk and driving a golf cart down the highway.
Since we are on the topic of sports, lets discuss the Superbowl. Yes, they do broadcast it live here. But they broadcast it without the Superbowl ads. This is probably the reason that American football has never really taken off anywhere else. That and watching the Superbowl at 12:30 at night while asking someone to "please pass the crisps" just feels...strange.
Well thats the news in Sports. I'm off to eat pancakes.
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