Bio

Being half Canadian (Dad) and half Lebanese (Mom), I was introduced to many activities and interests from these backgrounds. Probably my greatest interest are sports, mainly American football and Basketball. This in result had an effect in turning me into a gym/fitness freak, at one point even playing for the UAE American football team, with the opportunity of playing around the world. Traveling the world is a huge interest for both my family and me. The common tourist would go visit touristy sites and TripAdvisor certified restaurants, on the contrary I love to explore a country's real cities, interact with random people, and eating out of grandma’s home cooked food establishments. My final key interest must be my love for Nintendo. My first memories of my dad and I playing with each other was watching him play Mario on the Nintendo 64 when I was three. This blossomed into a childhood of epic proportions and an interest that I still hold dear to my heart even though I have grown. These interests have an impact on the type of person I have been shaped out to be.

Interactions like playing Nintendo with my dad established one of the main elements of my life that I most care about, family. Family to me is everything, this mentality was established in me at a young age and has been a piece of my life that I care for and wish to teach hopefully to a family of my own. On a less emotional scale, I have stressed myself for great care of my body. Growing up I was always the “biggest” guy in the class, which resulted in me getting quite a lot of comments. Thus 4 years ago I took it upon myself to focus and show more care towards my body, this has been one of the biggest obstacles I have had the opportunity of overcoming. Lastly, I take a good amount of care into my academic life, meaning: providing quality work, arriving to school/lessons on time, and managing my time efficiently to name a few. The consideration of care I put into my academic life has been a major part of me succeeding in prior years. Like my interests, what I care about has built a path for me on the way I live my life to the best of my potential.

Language in my life has been a way of connecting with my family and learning about various cultures from around the world. Being Canadian, I grew up with my first language being English, even though three generations ago my family from both sides had never spoken the language. As a result, I needed to learn the Arabic language I’m still studying today, in order to communicate with my large family from my Lebanese background. Additionally, learning Arabic is a key that connects me to my past, being and Arab-Canadian I lose some of the culture and understandings of my ancestors. The Arabic language itself shows me and allows me to understand where I came from and connects me to my family more than anything. As mentioned prior, one of my interests is travelling to new places and immersing myself in their culture. From my experience one of the best ways to understand a culture is by learning some of the language. Just this past summer I learnt basic Italian to prepare myself for my travels. By learning the basics of the language, it showed me how the Italian dialect is extremely friendly at its core, and how Italians will treat you as if you were part of their family. In short language has a huge significance in my life, meaning more than just a way of communicating, but a way of connecting with my past and diverse cultures from around the world.

The importance of studying a language correlates to the previous paragraph. Firstly, learning a language enables you to connect with people better than you could before, this occurs as speaking to something in their mother tongue language allows for opinions and thoughts that normally would not show from a language they have not fully immersed themselves in. Secondly, by learning a language you are inadvertently keeping a culture and history alive. A main reason that I pursuit to learn the Arabic language is to preserve my family’s culture that can easily fall victim to being forgotten in time. Lastly as mentioned before by learning a language, you learn a culture. Languages expresses the culture that they were created from, as such you gain a more in depth and firsthand experience of the culture.

           For a large portion of my childhood I felt excluded since I did not understand the Arabic language. Once or twice every year I travel to visit my family in Lebanon, whom only a few know any words in English. As a result, I had a rough time getting along with cousins as I would have no means to communicate with them other than my parents. This experience was one of the main reasons I began to focus more on studying the Arabic language.