I'm going to try to make this a regular thing

I think I may need to have a journal of sorts when I get back from Estonia, so I'm pretty sure I need to do this basically weekly to get credit for being here.

At first I thought that, aside from the language barrier and how much more quiet Estonians are compared to people from the US, Tartu was basically a town in America. Just next to Russia. The country's complete commitment to a laissez-faire economic model and their quick capitalist expansion has left the part of town that I see every day just like any other small town's economic center. There is a quaint old town center lined with cafes and shops, three huge malls right next to each other down the street, and groceries stores in every direction. The main difference I noticed is that you can walk everywhere.

Now that I'm trying to hunker down and become focused, though, I'm starting to realize that part of the challenge is dealing with the subtle changes. I didn't even think about the fact that the only place I can truly concentrate when I study is located in the St. Edward's library. When I need to focus in on the academic task at hand, I take all of my materials with me and head to the second floor and to the very back of the study area. I push the two chairs in the nook together, turn on the lamp, plug in my laptop, and get to work. I'm not the kind of person that can focus in a loud coffee shop or restaurant, which seems to be what people do here, and I haven't been able to find a space as cozy and personal as that space back home. I hate Starbucks for multiple reasons, but yesterday I found myself just wishing I could go to Starbucks, grab one drink, and sit in a plush chair for hours just studying. I don't know the etiquette of studying in cafes here, and I haven't been around to enough of the cafes to know exactly which are cozy and which aren't. I'm thinking that now, after all of the newness of Tartu is settling down and we are all starting to focus in on becoming more studious, I am really going to start feeling the challenges of being abroad. Changing your study habits to fit a new place is quite a difficult thing.

I just finished watching the movie Miracle with Peter and Olesea, and I was, as per usual, moved by the shameless nationalism. There is just something about those sports movies that makes you all proud and stuff. When I left home, I was very, very angry at my home country. I felt like we were complete bullies, and I was afraid that Barack Obama, political love of my life, would turn out to be just another politician who used empty rhetoric to get into power and then just continued to economically colonize the rest of the world. I basically saw my country as the ultimate Marxist capitalist villainous machine, and couldn't find it in myself to be proud when I saw it as the reason for so much global suffering. Deep down inside, I truly hoped that leaving would allow me to, if not love my country as blindly and naively as I had as a child, at least appreciate it for exactly what it is. As I watched Miracle, I felt the first stirrings of that in myself. I realized that no, America is no better than any other country, but it is every bit as good. I have every right to be proud of my country, and not because it is the best, not because we are somehow the most proud, the most idealistic, with the best ethics, because we aren't. We are not the only country that believes, at least in our rhetoric, in equality and human rights and human dignity. We may disagree with other countries on what those things mean, but that doesn't mean we are any better. It simply means we are different. But it also doesn't mean that we are any worse. We are a country that needs to have uniting and inspiring ideals to bring us together despite our mixed heritage, because we do not have one American ethnicity and tradition to provide our common bond. Our bond is through our idealistic history, and that is starting to be OK with me. I can be happy to say I am American, because I don't have to believe that we are the best country in the world to do so. I can learn to see my country for its qualities and its flaws, and appreciate it all the same.

I guess I really am changing.

:)