Part 1 - Bio

Hi, my name is Tómas Egilsson, and welcome to my blog. I am 16 years old, from Seltjarnarnes, Iceland,  and study at Raha International School. I have few strong interests, and lots of milder ones. I´ll only focus on the main ones today. I am a huge Liverpool fan, and follow football and the English Premier League religiously. I rarely ever miss a match, unless I simply don’t have time. I was able to go to Anfield, for a Liverpool vs Stoke match, which we won (notice the use of “we” when speaking about Liverpool) 4-1. Other than football, I enjoy films quite a bit. My personal project was a collection of 24 film reviews all packed into one big book. Comedies are my favorite genre, closely followed by a good thriller. I play a lot of video games (but that’ll most likely change with DP), and I will beat you at FIFA.

As years have gone by, I have learned about the importance of family. My 27-year old brother is my best friend (Sorry Rainier and Madhav) and every year I become closer and closer to him. The things I look forward to the most during the summer is being able to crash at my brother’s place for the weekends. I also have a sister that I love very much, but I’m not as close with her. My parents are a lot older than me, and we don’t have too much to talk about, but I still enjoy their company and value a strong relationship with them. Family will always be a number one priority for me. Friendship comes as a close second, as I feel that having strong relationships with other people is a great way to sustain happiness. I’m the type of person who has a few friends, but I know everything about them, and they know everything about me. Nothing is off the table. These are the things I value the most in life.

I am a bi-lingual person, meaning I speak both Icelandic and English fluently. Slowly but surely, English is becoming the more dominant language for me, even though Icelandic is my mother tongue. This annoys me quite a bit, because I am a very talkative person when I’m around people that I trust. So, when I’m speaking with my parents in Icelandic, I get very frustrated when I have to stop my conversations because I don’t know a specific word. So, whenever I go back to Iceland, it is important for me to learn as many new words as I can before I go back out, so that this happens less often. Language is very important to me because I am quite a deep thinker, and in order to convey my thoughts, I need to have an extensive vocabulary. That I think is why I’ve been able to succeed in English classes, because the type of person I am requires a good understanding of the language I’m using.

The study of language I would say is the core of all education. In order to be successful in most subjects, you have to be able to convey personal ideas in a way that other people can understand them. You have to put your thoughts and ideas on display, and communication is the only way to do that. So, by having a strong base in English or whatever language your school uses, you already have a huge advantage going into most, if not all of your classes.

As I mentioned previously, I become very frustrated when I don’t know what word to use when having conversations. This happens often with my parents, and it does hit me pretty hard because I want to be able to have detailed and sophisticated discussions with them, but it requires me to use a mix of Icelandic and English. So, in a sense of being able to have uninterrupted discussions in Icelandic, I would say that is a big barrier for me in terms of language.