Traditions. 26 March 2013

Tradition 1. Since I've been in Melbourne, I've traveled to Manila twice for an evaluation capacity building project. During our first visit, I asked what we needed to do differently during our second visit. One of the staff members sparked up immediately with "pasalubong" and the rest of the group voiced their agreement. It took me a bit to sort out what they were saying (Australian + Filipino accents are extra difficult on my internal translator) and then a bit more to figure out what it meant. Pasalubong (as I've come to understand it) is a Filipino tradition that a person who is visiting from a foreign place brings something along to share that is traditional in their country. (This works for Filipinos who travel to a foreign place, too, except they have to bring something from where they visited back for their friends at home.) The folks we were working with suggested we bring Australian treats for our pasalubong. When we asked the Australians on the Centre for Program Evaluation (CPE) staff what we should bring along, the message was clear: TimTams (cookies) and Freddo Frogs chocolates.We brought those along on trip #2 and they were such a hit that the Manila group thought we should name their newly created evaluation action team E.A.T. TimTams.

Tradition 2. 18 years ago in March, I was engaged to be married. Target had just come out with their electronic gift registry. The fiance and I went to register at Target, and they gave us a hand-held scanner that we were supposed to use to get the bar codes of gifts we wanted onto our registry list. We'd know the scanner had picked up the bar code for something when it beeped. The fiance thought the scanner thing was super cool, and proceeded to beep-beep-beep-beep-beep the first thing he saw, which happened to be marshmallow Easter peeps. For the record, neither of us particularly liked peeps.

That fall, we got peeps as wedding gifts. For the next 6+ years, we got peeps at every holiday. We got them from friends. We got them from extended family members. My mom bought peeps and froze them so we could have them when we were in Michigan for visits. There were a lot of peeps.

The husband has been history for more than 10 years now, but the peeps tradition lives on. In fact, my friend Lindean sent me yellow marshmallow peeps in my Easter box, which arrived a couple weeks ago. (Thanks Lindean! :)

Tradition 3&4. The week before Easter, we had afternoon tea (tradition 3) with everyone from CPE. This involved warming up hot cross buns (tradition 4), which are clearly the big Easter tradition here. All kinds of varieties are available at every bakery and grocery store. There are secret family recipes and generally a high level of intensity. Several folks from work brought hot cross buns for the tea. Sultanas (previously known to me only through fruit toast) made an appearance, as well as buns with "peel" (I assume this was orange or lemon peel), buns without peel, and buns with chocolate. They smelled delicious. And tasted way better than the ones I remember trying in the US. My contribution to afternoon tea: Peeps. Apparently, there are no marshmallow peeps in Oz. They were quite a hit.
"They're so cute!"
"What are they made of?"
"I am NOT eating that."
"These are delicious."
"How is that they're yellow?"

Synthesis. Thus, peeps, a tradition leftover from a long dead relationship, carried on courtesy of one of my best pals, became the American's pasalubong at the Australian Easter tea. To top it off, after trying a peep, one of my Aussie colleagues sent me the photo below, so I could use it as my facebook profile picture (thanks to whoever took the picture). Lots of folks were changing their facebook profile pictures to a pink equal sign on a red background to encourage the US Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act. Basically, the photo symbolizes peeps for marriage equality. Who knew it was possible to cram so much tradition and cross-cultural activity into a cute marshmallow treat?