I moved there in 2002. At the time all the shops would close at 5pm except Thursdays. Here in the US you can go to a bar or show and kids up to gray haired folks will be out, but where we were you would be the oldest one out if you were 27. People always wanted to talk US politics. I have a lot of male friends and there women and men didn’t seem to intermingle as much. Like at parties the men would all stand outside with beers and BBQ, while the women would be inside making salads. There was a different kind of racism in Australia. Here it is very color based. There you would have Maltese sh-t talking Lebanese or Cypriots sh-t talking the Turks. And Italians and Greeks are seen as different much like you might have seen in the US back in Ellis Island days.

Obviously I didn’t get over my “shock” because I convinced my husband to move here in 2007! 😄