Fairy Bread

Sunday, August 25, 2013 - Day 31 Living Down Under

What a busy weekend!  Charlie and Chaney went to a birthday party for a boy in their class.  We learned about two Australian traditions.  Besides cake, fairy bread is served.  Fairy bread is white bread with butter and hundreds and thousands (sprinkles) all over.  It is typically cut in a triangle shape.  Apparently this is a tradition at kids' parties here in Australia.  The parents at the party seemed surprised that we had never seen fairy bread before.  They assumed that we did it in the U.S.   The other tradition we learned is that when they sing "Happy Birthday" they conclude the song with three rounds of "hip hip hooray!"

Fairy Bread (I know you want some.)

At the birthday party, enjoying the fairy bread

while Chaney goes through the bowl of lollies looking for her favorite.

Charlie is sick today with a 102.2 degree temp.  :(   So Charlie and Daddy stayed home while Chaney and I went to a classmate's house for lunch.  They served lamb, a popular dish down here.  I had never had it before and I'm not sure I like it.  I'll give it another try.  The classmate's mom made a traditional Australian dessert called pavlova.  It was delicious.  Seriously delicious. She had never made it before and she did a great job as it's not an easy dessert to make.  She was really trying to introduce us to traditional Australian dishes which I thought was super thoughtful and sweet.

Pavlova
 It is a meringue dessert with a crisp crust and soft, light inside. The dessert is believed to have been created in honor of the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova either during or after one of her tours to Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s.

Charlie will probably be home from school tomorrow, even though the school doesn't have a policy of when a sick child stays home or comes back to school.  "If they are well, send them!"  I think we will stick with the U.S. school policy of being temperature free for 24 hours.  Erich will take and pick up Chaney from school. 

Questions the Aussies have asked me...

• "We put milk in our coffee and you guys put cream.  Is that really cream or is it milk?"  Cream to them means heavy cream. They don't have half and half over here and I've been explaining what it is.  (I've been asked this three times.)
• "When you guys eat your peanut butter and jelly, is that jelly like our jam or is it like your Jell-O?"  (Australian's word for jelly is jam.  Jelly to them is Jell-O.) They just want to clarify and make sure we don't put Jell-O on our PB&J sandwiches. 

My Random Thoughts and Observations...

• They call a sweater or sweatshirt a jumper.
• Saturday night the Canberra US Military Wives group got together to play Bunco.  I had a good time and met a few new American ladies and a few really nice Aussie ladies. 
• Candy is called lollies.
•  I was tucking Charlie into bed and he asked me a question about the U.S. Embassy here in Canberra. He asked, "Mommy, does the Embassy have American plugs or Australian plugs?" I told him I didn't know. He responded with, "I hope it has American plugs since it's a little piece of America."