Norway - Great choice.

You have to just stop caring. Not to the point of not being vigilant but you can’t let yourself be “followed” by that fear over how people see you. It will affect how you see others and the confidence with which you interact with other people.

This is the kind of struggle that lots of people have to face in regards to immigration status, ethnicity, being mixed race. But if nobody made the brave choice to overcome that fear and study abroad, there’d be a lot less foreign students and the world would be a less interesting place. And also would snowball into being less safe for the smaller number of foreign students left who do make the trip.

It’s a leap of faith, but you have to ask yourself “Would I treat someone with suspicion if they were from an ‘enemy’ country?” If the answer is yes, you yourself need to work on being more trustful of others. Then at last you can assume that people will think the same way as you; people are more similar than you might think.

I’m British and my parents, the news media, my education and my government as a whole has spent so much effort trying to paint russians negatively, but people my age don’t seem to have prejudice against the Russians we meet. I think Norway is a lot less extreme than the UK in this regard, as they’re a bit more detached from conflicts. Despite being a core NATO member.