Alaa moved to Estonia on October 11, 2016, fleeing the war together with her husband and their then one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. In Syria, they lost everything. In Estonia, she found a home in Türi, and started working at a marzipan factory.

The fall of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad's regime marked the arrival of long-awaited freedom.

"I'm very, very, very happy," Alaa said. "At last – I have a free country, and that's wonderful. A wonderful thing for me. I sing, I dance, and all my colleagues said, 'Congratulations, Alaa!' I talk and talk and talk – I am free now, I can say what I want. This is a big deal."

Alaa acknowledged that she honestly doesn't feel like a stranger in Estonia at all.

"If I cry, someone is there for me," she said. "If I'm happy, someone is there for me. Whether I have citizenship or not – I am your daughter. Whether I'm Syrian, European or Estonian – I will always be Estonia's daughter."

Not everyone's integration into Estonian society has gone so smoothly, however.

When the European Union began allocating refugees to member states based on a quota system in 2015, both the Estonian state and the refugees themselves showed reluctance; the country lacked the necessary support systems and communities for the refugees.

"Before 2015 and 2016, very few refugees actually came to Estonia," noted Mondo migration expert Meelis Niine. "We're talking about a couple dozen people a year."

He recalled that when the EU migration plan called for and eventually brought in just over 200 refugees, the situation sparked a lot of uncertainty, ignorance and fears in society about what this would all entail.

"We debated how many refugees Estonia could accommodate," he said. "Now, years later, we see that Estonia has been able to take in tens of thousands of refugees, and support their adaptation and help them settle in. And we've managed the arrival of war refugees from Ukraine, we've managed to support them, and we also managed with the Syrians, although these were vastly different numbers."

Easier for kids to learn the language

Among the main challenges Syrians face integrating into Estonian society are the language barrier as well as difficulties in finding a place to live and a job.

Shorok Alsulaiman's earlier dreams of becoming a dentist were shattered due to her lack of fluency in Estonian. Today, she is a student at the Estonian University of Life Sciences (EMÜ) in Tartu, studying engineering and technology.

"It was very hard at first, and I'm still facing some challenges today," she acknowledged. "But I'm very satisfied otherwise – very good; I'm happy. And I think about how I'm lucky that I came to Estonia – that I have a very peaceful life now."

Her biggest challenges have been studying, the language, and university itself.

"They're like missions, and these were the hardest missions!" she admitted. "But I hope I can manage it."

Younger kids, meanwhile, have had the easiest time integrating into local society.

Siblings Wisam and Ghala were kindergarten-aged when they first arrived in Estonia. Now they both attend Laupa Basic School, just outside Türi, where they're students like any others.

They both speak fluent, native-sounding Estonian and earn mostly top grades. Estonia has become their home.

"I definitely want to stay in Estonia," Wisam admitted. "I wouldn't want to go back – that would be really hard. My Arabic is already getting much worse than my Estonian."

"I'd like to stay in Estonia too," Ghala added. "The people here are great, and I have a lot of friends here."

Laupa Basic School principal Kaarel Aluoja had pushed hard to ensure that these children would attend their small school, where students could grow up with a more open mind.

Studies show that in Estonia, contact between immigrants and locals is limited mostly to at school and at work; there is much less contact between the two groups during leisure time or in social settings. Alsulaiman's experience reflects this.

"I have Palestinian friends, I have Turkish, Azerbaijani friends, and I do have Estonian friends, but not many," she confirmed. "[Estonians] are a bit reserved, and wait for us to make the first move. That's also why it's hard for me to be good friends with Estonians. But I'd still like to find Estonian friends."

The EMÜ student plans to return to Syria one day, but feels it's too early to go right now. She's hesitant to rebuild her life again for the third time.

In an interview with ETV's "Pealtnägija" four years ago, she was asked what she pictured her life would be like ten years from then. At the time, she said she hoped to graduate from university and perhaps get married.

"Those ten years aren't over yet!" she said today. "Maybe that plan will come true, but I don't know. As for getting married... I'm not thinking about that right now, but maybe in another six years. Maybe."

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