When people move abroad, it’s normal to experience serious culture shock. Culture shock is a feeling of being disoriented or confused by a different way of life and set of norms than you’re used to. You’d think moving from America to another English speaking country wouldn’t be so jarring, but you might actually be surprised at how different things can really be even when the bulk of the language and customs overlap nicely.

Devyn Hales, 22, from California, recently moved to Sydney, Australia, on a one-year working visa and quickly found out that she had a lot to learn about her new home.

The first thing that made her feel out of place? Believe it or not, her name. It wasn’t going to work Down Under. It all started when a group of men made fun of her on St. Patrick’s Day.

Why her name became a problem the moment she landed

After she introduced herself as Devyn, the men laughed at her. “They burst out laughing, and when I asked them why, they told me devon is processed lunch meat,” she told The Daily Mail. It’s similar to baloney, so I introduce myself as Dev now,” she said in a viral TikTok video with over 1.7 million views.

For those who have never been to Australia, Devon is a processed meat product usually cut into slices and served on sandwiches. It is usually made up of pork, basic spices, and a binder. Devon is affordable because people buy it in bulk and it’s often fed to children. Australians also enjoy eating it fried, like spam. It is also known by other names such as fritz, circle meat, Berlina and polony, depending on where one lives on the continent. It’s like in America, where people refer to cola as pop, soda, or Coke, depending on where they live in the country.

So, one can easily see why a young woman wouldn’t want to refer to herself as a processed meat product that can be likened to baloney or spam.

“Wow, love that for us,” another woman named Devyn wrote in the comments. “Tell me the name thing isn’t true,” a woman called Devon added.

For Devyn, it could have been worse, as her name was easily shortened to Dev. She could have been named Sheila, which is a slang term for women or girls that also carries slightly derogatory undertones.

@dhalesss #fypシ #australia #americaninaustralia #sydney #aussie ♬ original sound – dev

#fypシ #australia #americaninaustralia #sydney #aussie ♬ original sound – dev

The other differences that caught her off guard

Besides changing her name, Dev shared some other differences between living in Australia and her home country.

“So everyone wears slides. I feel like I’m the only one with ‘thongs’—flip-flops—that have the little thing in the middle of your big toe. Everyone wears slides,” she said. “Everyone wears shorts that go down to your knees and that’s a big thing here.”

Dev also noted that there are a lot of guys in Australia named Lachlan, Felix and Jack. (Oliver, Noah, and Henry have topped the charts in recent years, with Leo and William also consistently near the top.)

She was also thrown off by the sound of the plentiful magpies in Australia. According to Dev, they sound a lot like crying children with throat infections. “The birds threw me off,” she said before making an impression that many people in the comments thought was close to perfect.

“The birds is so spot on,” a user named Jess wrote. “The birds, I will truly never get used to it,” Marissa added.

@dhalesss Replying to @j🌿 #greenscreenvideo ♬ original sound – dev

Replying to @j🌿 #greenscreenvideo ♬ original sound – dev

The upsides she didn’t expect

One issue that many Americans face when moving to Australia is that it is more expensive than the United States. However, many Americans who move to Australia love the work-life balance. Brooke Laven, a brand strategist in the fitness industry who moved there from the U.S., says that Aussies have the “perfect work-life balance” and that they are “hard-working” but “know where to draw the line.”

Despite the initial cultural shocks, Devyn is embracing her new life in Australia with a positive outlook. In a follow-up video, she mentions she hasn’t even had many run-ins with Australia’s infamous and dangerous creatures like giant spiders and man-eating sharks. There are other perks to living there, as well.

“The coffee is a lot better in Australia, too,” she added with a smile, inspiring others to see the bright side of cultural differences.

This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.

This article originally appeared 7 months ago. It has been updated.

A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a  gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing. 

Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold. 

A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen. 

Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing. 

Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to  loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth. 

Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:

Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis 

Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community

Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or  in one of 60   countries where we work around the globe

Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door 

Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore

Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone. 

Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today. 

Renee Buckingham was on a tram in Melbourne when an older man started calling a young woman “disgusting.”

The woman was with friends, wearing a dress. The man told her she should be embarrassed for dressing that way in public, in front of older people like him, he said. He kept going.

She couldn’t stay quiet

Buckingham, a Melbourne-based content creator, said she felt her heart rate climb as she watched. She doesn’t usually look for confrontation. For a moment she hesitated, worried the man might turn aggressive if she intervened.

Then she spoke up anyway.

View this post on Instagram

“I said to him, ‘Don’t you dare speak to women like that,’” she explained in an Instagram post shared on January 19, 2026. She told him that if he felt uncomfortable looking at the woman’s outfit, that was his problem, not hers. She told him a woman’s clothing choices have nothing to do with her worth.

He didn’t have much to say after that.

Putting the shame on the shamer

Buckingham posted about the incident and it spread quickly, drawing thousands of responses from people who recognized the moment, the calculation that happens in real time when you witness something wrong in a public space and have to decide whether the cost of speaking up is worth it.

For the young woman on the tram, Buckingham had a direct message: “Never change who you are for any man.”

Her message resonated

The comments on her post filled with people who’d been in similar situations on both sides of it, the ones who’d been shamed, the ones who’d watched and said nothing and still thought about it, and the ones who’d spoken up and found it went differently than they feared. “Thank you for advocating for that young woman,” wrote one commenter. “We need to keep speaking up.”

Buckingham’s point, boiled down: the discomfort belongs to the person doing the shaming, not the person being shamed.

Jodie Foster has won two Oscars, been famous since she was 12, and has been working in the industry since she was barely 3. By her own account, all of that success had started to do something to her she didn’t like.

The cappuccino that........

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