i know i´m not alone on this one

so i found something out yesterday that made me sad, and i know i shouldn´t take it personally, but i still can´t help but feel that way even a little...anyway, i´m not sure where he found the information, but one of the kids from aiesec told me that apparently 66.6% (more or less) brazilians don´t like americans. damn.

i realize that this is one of the reasons why i´m here in the first place, it´s the reason that people need to travel and meet people from other cultures and try to understand eachother. it´s the reason we can´t judge accurately from a first impression and generalize about the people of an entire culture. i know i know i know. but still, for me to be one american in the midst of 66% of the population of a huge country makes me feel very overwhelmed, like it´s just too much for 1 person to take on, and to realize that over 1/2 of the people i walk past on the street every day might not like me if they knew i was american...it feels unfair, and i know that americans do it too, and even to each other.

why??? we´re all people, right? i realize that the u.s. hasn´t had some of the most, um, globally-approved of policies lately or even the most well-liked president, but it makes me sad how sometimes people either haven´t had the opportunity or the desire to look beyond this to the people themselves. it´s made me vacilliate between loving and feeling ashamed of my country since i´ve been here, which i guess isn´t really good or bad. i realize that no one is perfect, and the u.s. is no exception, and it´s not like i personally took some of the iniatives that others have found so offensive...i can´t help but feel now, though, in a time when oil prices are rising through the roof, economies are slowing, and people are starting to feel an economic crunch that they haven´t felt in years, though it doesn´t seem probably or plausible (because of the cost), now is the time when we need to be trying to understand each other more than ever. one country can´t fix this by itself. one person can´t fix this by himself/herself. but if there were a bunch of us, maybe it´d all add up to be enough.

so i comfort myself by thinking of myself as one of this bunch...i hope there´s enough of us.