I think you’ll always see your country differently once you come back to it, sometimes it can be good or bad and other times its just a realisation that it is…. different to other places in the world! 🙂 It didn’t take long for me to feel I was not in France anymore…
1. People You Don’t Know Judge Your Football Team
Not long after I got home my mum decided to move house and needed to put most of her furniture in storage for a few months. She called a storage company and had someone come over to the house one day to estimate how much space she’d need for all her furniture.
I ended being the only one home when he arrived so I let the guy from the storage company in and showed him around. When he got to our living room he looked down at my brother’s football t-shirt draped over the couch which proudly displays his Australian football team Collingwood. The guy looked at the t-shirt and then turned to me and said “You’re not a Collingwood supporter are ya?”
I laughed and said no – it was my brother’s and I was a Geelong supporter. The guy laughed and told me ‘oh – well that’s ok then!’ When he left and I had shut the door behind him I couldn’t help but think…. Only in Australia! Only in Australia, will people you don’t know make fun of your football team – in the nicest way possible.
2. This is Winter
And this is spring in the UK….
A beautiful spring day of 12 degrees! 😛
Yeah… Nuff said!
I admit that the first photo is a photo of The Whitsunday Islands in winter, things are a little different down south in Melbourne. Having said that I regularly walked outside when I got back home in mid-winter to blue skies and sunshine. It’s nice to have a ‘break’ from grey skies every few days in winter.
3. 17 degrees is cold
Well – at least in spring or summer time! We’re now rolling into summer in Australia (yeah, I know – we’re weird) and there’s a certain expectation that anything below 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees F) is ‘cold’ and we can complain about it.
I realised this at work when I looked at the bright blue sky and lack of clouds and said to my colleague that it was a ‘nice day.’ She somehow heard the opposite and agreed,
“Oh I know – it’s not very nice today.” I mentioned that it was 17 degrees and we had a clear blue sky and sunshine,
“Oh I know” she replied “but it’s not as hot as yesterday, and there’s a bit of wind too”. She was right – the day before had been about 24 degrees and I did feel a slight wind as I was walking to work, but I’m still in the European mentality of ‘YOU CALL THIS COLD?! ‘
Clearly I’ve lived in Europe too long, because I know I would have been complaining just like her if I hadn’t been living in Europe. I’m also pretty sure that in a few years time my body will climatise and I’ll be expecting 20+ temperatures every spring, and anything below 10 degrees during winter will be ‘freezing’ again.
Until that time comes however, I can appreciate how good the weather can be here! When I start complaining again, can all my European friends slap me? 🙂
Oh Sacré Bleu ! 
Americans will make fun of strangers for their sports teams, as well!