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American woman forced to change her name after learning what it means in Australia

Things are a bit different Down Under.

via Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels and Ethan Brooke/Pexels

A woman is shocked to learn that her name means something totally different in Australia.

Devyn Hales, 22, from California, recently moved to Sydney, Australia, on a one-year working visa and quickly learned that her name wouldn’t work Down Under. It all started when a group of men made fun of her on St. Patrick’s Day.

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 boloney 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.

@dhalesss

#fypシ #australia #americaninaustralia #sydney #aussie

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.

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," Jess wrote. "The birds, I will truly never get used to it," Marissa added.

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. “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 last year.

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Dutch magician performs for North Korean kids, proving you can find joy just about anywhere

Jesper Grønkjær’s sense of humor and awe has inspired smiles around the globe.

via Freeport Traveler/YouTube

Jesper Grønkjær performs magic for children in North Korea.

North Korea is the most oppressive place in the world, and its people lack freedom of speech, press, or movement. The government, headed by Kim Jong Un, controls all aspects of its citizen's lives, and those who stand up against the regime are punished harshly. It’s also hostile to people outside the country for fear that outside ideas could destabilize the regime.

The country is so isolated from the rest of the world that it just recently opened its border to allow a small number of tourists to visit its Special Economic Zone for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2024, North Korea demonstrated its alliance with Russia by permitting more than 800 of its citizens to visit the isolated nation.

Another of North Korea’s recent visitors was Dutch magician and adventurer Jesper Grønkjær, who set out to see if he could manage to get a smile from its citizens. “I’ve spent my life proving one universal truth: a smile is the shortest distance between all people on Earth,” Grønkjær said.

"We know you can suppress people, but you can't suppress a smile. I will investigate that, and where better to do it than in one of the strictest countries in the world?” he opens his video on the Freeport Traveler YouTube page. When Grønkjær visited North Korea, he was accompanied by two guards wherever he went, and his passport was taken from him. At night, he was locked in his hotel like a jail cell. However, he still elicited huge grins from children and adults alike as he wowed them with magic tricks with animal balloons, a stuffed ferret, red foam balls, card tricks, and much of his joyful brand of Abracadabra.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

While visiting North Korea, Grønkjær watched the country’s “Day of the Sun Celebrations” at Kim Il-Sung Square in North Korea. Held each year on April 15th, the holiday celebrates the birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the country's founder, and features dancing, military tests, parades, and concerts. For North Koreans, the holiday is akin to Christmas.

Grønkjær’s trip to North Korea isn’t the only exotic and potentially dangerous place where he has performed magic. He has also performed for Indigenous people in Peru, the descendants of the Incas in the Andes mountains, and the Masai warriors in Tanzania. The magician of 20 years has also performed for orphanages in Uganda, the jungles of Irian Jaya, the ice caps of Greenland, and the Las Vegas strip.


Grønkjær uses his adventurous expeditions as subject matter for his various lectures, print articles, and appearances on Danish television. When he’s back home, he performs more than 225 nights a year for family events, circuses, weddings, and corporate parties.

In a world where it can feel like the people in North Korea, Tanzania, Peru, or Denmark are a world away culturally and politically, Grønkjær’s work shows that no matter where you live on the planet or what language you speak, we all share the same sense of wonder and humor. While nefarious forces in the world work to drive us apart, he proves it takes very little for all of us to realize our shared humanity.

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'Broccoli hair' and 14 of the 'worst millennium fashion trends people can't believe happened

People are passionate about the past 25 years of fashion.

via Canva/Photos, The White House/Wikimedia Commons, and Todd Dwyer/Flickr

Patrick Mahomes and his broccoli cut, a woman with a septum piercing and some hipsters circa 2009.

We are already a quarter of the way through the 21st century, and now that enough time has elapsed, we can look back on some older trends with a twinge of embarrassment. The turn-of-the-century brought low-rise jeans, velour tracks suits — some with cheeky sayings on the butt — and bedazzled everything. There was also the indie sleaze movement, where it seemed like overnight, everyone wore skinny jeans and looked like The Strokes.

Over the past 15 years, athleisure has been at the fashion forefront, along with eco-friendly gear. Sneakers have become status symbols, like in the ‘80s and ‘90s, with Jordans, Yeezys, and limited-run collaborations draining banking accounts. We’ve also seen a reemergence of ‘90s styles amongst teens, with baggy pants and crop tops making a huge comeback.


The past 25 years have also seen the rise of fast fashion, a movement in which trendy, low-cost clothing mimicking big brand names has flooded the market and is thrown out almost as quickly as it is manufactured. This trend has raised many questions about labor exploitation in developing nations, resource depletion, and overconsumption.

That said, many people hope the fashion trends of the past 25 years will remain in the past and that some we see today are over as soon as possible. On the AskReddit subforum, a Redditor asked, "What was the worst fashion trend this century?" We highlighted the top 15 highlights (or, for many, lowlights) of the first quarter century.

1. Fast fashion

"Fast generally doesn't refer to how long it lasts, it refers to how quickly it gets manufactured and sold. It's less about the poor craftsmanship, more about the environmental impacts, the waste, the labor exploitation, and the manipulation of fashion trends."

"I feel like there's two sides of fast fashion where one side is how poorly constructed garments are and using extremely cheap and/or non-durable fiber to make them, and then there's the side where we're pumping out clothes like crazy with the idea that producing enough will ensure something sells enough to make a profit margin."

2. Hyper-bro style

"That weird hyper-bro period of multiple polos with popped collars and an upside down backwards visor."

"My immediate thought was the popped collars. What a horrible period that was."

3. Dropped-crotch jeans

"Those pants that were tight in the legs but also somehow had a sagging butt."


4. Thick false eyelashes

"Oh God, this. I work part-time at a retail, and so many girls have those outrageous false lashes. I genuinely can’t fathom why anyone would get them and how they think it even looks decent."

"Really long fake eyelashes always remind me of Mr. Snuffleupagus. Which I assume is not what they're going for, but..."

5. Lip injections

"A beautiful woman can go from a 10 to wouldn’t date easily with either of these. I really don’t get it."



6. Broccoli hair

"I don't think it's a terrible hairdo in and of itself. And I like to see people embracing their curls. It just gets funny when every member of a generation has the same hairstyle."

"I was surprised so many people had this curly hair, and then I learned that many of these young boys are getting perms for the look."

"It’s a struggle. I have an 11-year-old with naturally curly hair. He gets stopped everywhere and asked if the curls are natural. Kids at school make fun of him by saying he must have a perm. But he loves his curls and doesn’t want to cut them. So he gets the broccoli/alpaca look; and I think he looks adorable."


7. Barrel jeans

"It makes it look like they have bowlegs - a medical condition that should be corrected in toddlers."

"Not a single person asked for barrel jeans."

8. Fake fingernails

"Super long fake fingernails that are bedazzled and sharpened to a pointed end. Way too much time, energy, and money spent on something that is straight up awful and impractical."

"It's like a lifted pickup truck on big rims, absolutely about the aesthetic while rendering it completely useless."

9. Low-rise jeans

"Low-rise jeans. Not because they looked bad, but because they made everyone collectively anxious about sitting down."

"I was a science teacher in a class where students sat on stools. Had to avert my eyes often while helping a student behind someone with these on."


10. Jeans under dresses

"I may have fallen victim to this one lol. I don’t wear dresses much now, but I definitely did the jeans thing a time or two long ago lol."

"Pants under dresses only look cute on girls in Elementary school."

11. Long beards

"And their obsession with running their paws through it all the time. Imagine the smell!"

"Long beards are fine if you take care of it though, which some don't."


12. Bedazzled jeans

"The bedazzled jeans with excessive stitching and adornments. True Religion was one of the more popular brands. The kind of pants you’d wear with an Affliction shirt. Don’t know what they’re called, but I hope they stay gone."

"These have filtered down to rural areas/suburbs of small cities for people who want to think of themselves as cowboys, and it’s super gross."



13. Septum piercings

"It's so ridiculous. I keep picturing a bull in a field."

"I don't mind nose rings or other types of piercings, but that one bugs the sh*t out of me."

14. The Edgar haircut

"The Edgar haircut is the worst one. So many people are going to look back on those pictures in shame 20 years from now."


15. Super small suits

"When I got married I wanted the tight suit with inch-too-short pants: it was 2013, that was the look. Bought a suit from an independent shop, 70 year old owner/tailor refused to alter the suit like that. He said I’d look back at my wedding pics and wish I was wearing something more classic. I took his advice and I’m glad I did."

"While I like the recent James Bond movies, I blame Daniel Craig (or at least the stylist) for the too small suit look. His suits were consistently about two sizes too small in the movies."


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Woman gets call from upset teacher over cousin to sneaking in grandson's bedroom at night

Cousin Vicky just can't seem to stay out of the kids' bedrooms at night.

Photo credit: Canva

Woman gets upset call over cousin sneaking into grandchild's bedrooms

Every caregiver welcomes positive phone calls from teachers or school administrators. It gives you and the child a boost for the day, and sometimes it can be the thing that turns your day around. But every phone call can't be about a good deed that a child has done, some school communications are the kind that are needed to get to the bottom of something or express a concern.

These more serious calls can be uncomfortable for everyone involved as well as scary due to not knowing how the other party will react. Dawn Marie is a grandmother that helps take care of her grandchildren, so the children have their own bedrooms and clothes at her house. Recently, Dawn was a recipient to one of the more uncomfortable phone calls schools sometimes have to make, but this wasn't about her grandson's behavior.

The phone call was much more concerning that she was prepared to handle. Turns out her grandson has been complaining to his teachers that his cousin Vicky comes into his room and hides under his bed late at night. Doing what any teacher would, she asked the small child if he informed an adult to which the child responded that he has told his grandmother about it several times and she won't stop Vicky. Clearly, this is not a situation to be taken lightly based on the information the child is giving to his teachers which is why they reached out to Dawn for clarification.

Tv Land Running GIF by Teachers on TV LandGiphy

The grandmother was shocked by her grandchild's confession but not because they boy's story was untrue. Dawn admits in a video uploaded to TikTok that her grandson was absolutely telling the truth. Vicky does come into his bedroom at night but she also goes into the bedroom of his sibling as well and she had no intention of stopping it for a very unexpected reason.

"He also told them that he has expressed to me that he was afraid of her and I just say, 'she's not doing anything to you.' So they asked my grandson if Vicky was a dog, a cat, or an animal of some sort and he said 'no, Vicky is my cousin.' He also said that there are times that I do go into his room and I go under his bed to get Vicky and I put her in the kitchen and I make her stay there all night," the woman says before continuing. "Y'all I gotta stop playing around with my grandkids because I have jokingly said that Vicky was their cousin and he really took that to heart because Vicky happens to be..."

@dawnlewinsky5 ‼️I tell my kids their cousin Vicky does more in the house then all of them combined. She is welcomed and should be treated with respect‼️#fyp #foryoupage #joke #storytime #family #story #school #momlife #kidsoftiktok #contentcreator #influencer ♬ original sound - Dawn Marie

The woman's camera cuts to a Verslife robot vacuum on a charging port. Dawn then explains that Vicky, the robot vacuum is on a timer to clean the floors from 1 AM to 2 AM so she can work while everyone is asleep and nothing is on the floor. This makes it easier for Dawn to wake up in the morning to mop the floors but her grandson didn't explain that pertinent bit of information to his teachers. Likely because in his eyes, Vicky was in fact his cousin due the the joke his grandmother made. People thought the innocent mistake was quite hilarious.

"They was about to call CPS on you over Vicky," one person laughs.

"As a teacher I would had been dying laughing finding out it was a vacuum cleaner," someone writes.

Clean Up Animation GIF by NickelodeonGiphy

"I hollered when you revealed Vicky," another giggles.

"Them ppl was gonna be coming to take u down, and I’m thinking Vicky was a ghost," someone else shares.

One person asked the question on everyone's mind, "please explain how you explain that to the school cuz that was funny," before Dawn answers, "I let them finish and then I simply said but Vicky is my robot vacuum. She does more than he does around here and we laughed."

Let this be a hilarious lesson to parents and caregivers with young children, when giving your robot vacuum human names, be sure you inform the child that when they tell others about it to include that it is indeed a robot. That certainly could've ended with a knock at the door from child protective services, thankfully it only ended in a belly laugh for everyone involved.

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