Introductory Blog Post

Introduction!

My name is Amoolya Shishupalan and I’m from India with a lot of its tradition and arts developed in me. I love to dance and sing but the difference is, I do classical dance and Carnatic music. They’ve always fascinated me and I was involved in it since I was 4. I also love K-Pop, something that students in Raha brought me into. My inspiration was my sister, who was an all-rounder, let it be in academics or through cultural activities. We both received the prestigious Hamdan award at a young age and I thank both my parents, especially my mom for putting up so much effort and time just for us to succeed. Reverting back to my origin, although I am an Indian, I was born here in Abu Dhabi, UAE and therefore, I was brought up with two different cultures at the same time. The mixture of the two countries’ traditions and cultural created a sort of respect and admiration for their similarities and differences. Language, was a great influence in this scenario. Though I spent all my life in an Arab country, I’m not familiar with communicating in Arabic and this is because at home, my family talks in our mother tongue, Malayalam. On the other hand, my father understands and also speaks Arabic as he deals with a variety of customers, mainly Arabs, at his workplace. At my previous school we use English and are also taught Arabic and Hindi and so, I indulged in learning many languages at a time. Yet this didn’t stop me from going for more languages as I took on Tamil (taught by a few of my friends and by just listening to Tamil music and watching movies) and after joining Raha, in French (taught at school) and Korean (from my friends). As you probably noticed, I’ve always been fascinated by different types of languages as they are part of a culture and simply cannot be replaced by knowing and using a different language.

Personally, languages are important to be learnt as they help you communicate with a wider range of audience. Sometimes, it’s better talking to someone in their most comfortable language than in a foreign language. So if you are interested in multi-languages, isn’t it better to be mindful of others’ comforts and be able to talk to them freely with what makes them open up? This was the reason that motivated me to learn different languages and to also be respectful to their attached cultures. In the past, I haven’t felt out casted because I knew certain languages but I always found it difficult to comprehend various accents and slangs. For example, when I first came to Raha, it was challenging for me to understand what the teachers and my peers were saying as I came from a school that used an Indian accent and nothing else. This was frustrating for me and also upset me a lot. Yet, I got used to it and began to understand this new speech. Slowly, I started to change my style of speaking. Though it was hard, it was adaptable and therefore, I don’t think I’ve faced any major language barriers and yet, have had minor issues.

Goals!

Currently, I don’t have anything new I would want to try this year because DP is
already new for me! I believe that this adjustment is more than enough for me to handle. Some of my goals is to improve my analyzing skills in English and for this I believe, we are already under progress as with every lesson, we get a reading task to corresponding questions to complete. This is a great way for me to understand different texts and be able to enhance my analyzing skills. I am also trying to organize myself and to not procrastinate a lot. This is also being worked on because I feel Mr. Michael sets realistic deadlines and gives sufficient workload which are attainable by our group within the required time frame. This way, I feel like the staff of the school also empowers and motivates us to reach our specific goals. Lastly, the structuring of our lesson plans also makes me confident that the required knowledge will be acquired over the next two years, just in time!