I worry that I am leaving the impression on my host parents that I am an asocial recluse. I spend a lot of time sitting in my room scrolling through PDF files of class readings, and paging through my textbook. I feel like an all-around useless member of this quasi-family, emerging from my room to lounge around with them for mealtimes, and occasionally watching the news or some Estonian TV program, but generally staying anchored to my upstairs bedroom. I'd like to hang out with Riina and Aivar more, but it's hard to stay glued to a news report or sitcom I can only partially understand when papers require writing, articles and chapters must be read, and friends and family overseas should be corresponded with.
I have been telling myself that they understand I am busy, that they know it's nothing personal. I have to tell myself this, because otherwise I feel like I'm playing the part of a broody and ungrateful adolescent, taking up space in the house but not really making myself part of the home. I am aware that this perceived dynamic is starting to edge into the way I interact with Riina and Aivar: I think I'm being a little awkward around them. I need to get over this, to shake this feeling and just relax. That's all that will improve the atmospheric disturbance in the house, whether it's real or all in my head.
Another way to look at it is really quite simple: it doesn't matter if host family relations aren't sunshiney right now, because I'll be in a different country in a little over a week.
Whoa.
Toole Castle on the Gulf of Finland [again, courtesy of the panorama setting on my camera]
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