Working in Spanish - a leap of faith

My relationship with the Spanish language is still complicated. I understand everything (well, unless somebody starts speaking with a terrible Mayan accent that I don’t think is humanly possible to understand anyway). I freely speak Spanish when I know that the person doesn’t speak English at all. But when Liang, Sherief and Javier start speaking Spanish at our gatherings, I always participate in English. Cannot really explain why. One on one with Javier I feel free to speak Spanish sometimes, but then he always gets super excited and starts saying how “good” my pronunciation is and how cute I look and sound, that it embarrasses me, so yet again I prefer to switch. It’s funny really, because he always speaks to me in Spanish, and I almost always respond in English. I wonder what somebody who witnesses our conversations may think about this bizarre linguistic interaction.

Working in Spanish though is a totally different ball game. You have to know all the correct terminology and be 100% sure that you understand everything and respond adequately and not in a way that can potentially be misinterpreted. I don’t think my Spanish is there just yet. That is why when Sherief called me the other day and said, “Can you do an Open Water course with a couple from Mexico City? It’s no problem for you to do it in Spanish, right?” I firmly said, “NO WAY”.

With diving it’s even more tricky, especially if this is your students’ first time underwater. One of the most important tasks for a dive instructor is to make students feel SAFE. And how can you feel safe if you don’t understand what exactly your instructor is trying to convey to you, or if you see that the instructor doesn’t fully understand what you are asking or concerned about? Tough…

After I presented my arguments to both Sherief and Javier, they both considered them for a very brief moment, and then said, almost in unison, “That’s bullshit, you can totally do it! Eventually, you’ll have to do courses in Spanish, so now is as good of a time as it will ever be for you to start. Just do it!” Aha… I thought, OK, we have a business together so supposedly they care about this company being professional and having a good reputation. Maybe my Spanish is really not that bad and maybe I CAN do it then? “Fine, - I said. – But if this turns into a complete disaster, you are responsible!” They laughed.

It wasn’t a disaster. In fact, it was a very fun experience. The young couple from Mexico City was super nice and friendly, and they didn’t really speak English, so there was no way to switch between languages back and forth (I’m glad, actually, because this switching is confusing for the brain, I think, although mine seems to be very much used to it with all the Russian-English concoction we speak in NYC). I had to focus on Spanish and I did a good job. Of course, I almost had a panic attack the morning before the first class when I woke up at 5AM to review all the dive terms and idioms I’d learned the day before (yes, I had only one day to prepare) and realized that I didn’t remember anything. I just couldn’t produce anything! Luckily, it was just a temporary stupor, and it all rushed back pretty soon after I forced myself to relax.

The next two days I spent almost all the time with the guys. It is pretty difficult to squeeze a 4-day course into 2 days that they had available, and for me it’s even more difficult to do it in a totally foreign language. The Open Water course includes a lot of theory, and usually students read the manual before coming here to do their training dives, with all the theory exercises accomplished and quizzes done. But these two were completely unprepared. To speed things up I had to explain all the relevant points in a class setting. We also did all the exercises together. That was a bit challenging, but I was actually more worried about the water part – I didn’t want to linguistically fail at making them feel safe.

That went well, too. I am just really lucky - both of them feel very comfortable in the water and they are fast learners, too. So it wasn’t difficult for them to pick up all the necessary underwater techniques, making it possible to complete the course in only two days. Not even once did they show me that they were having a difficult time understanding me, although naturally I made some mistakes. The funny part is that while in “normal” life I feel super self-conscious about the mistakes I may potentially make and that is why I just shut up before even trying to say anything, this setting made a Spanish chatter-box out of me. Partly, it’s the amount of information that you have to transfer into your student’s head, but partly, I believe, I was just really enjoying hearing myself speak and didn’t want to stopJ.

It was a lot of work and the only time I had for myself is watching sunsets really, but it was so much fun! I’m so happy that I’m surrounded by people who push me to do things that I would never take on if it were solely up to me. It’s all about taking a leap of faith, and leaping is so much easier when you see that your friends genuinely believe in you.

After the course I even spoke with Javier for a whole 2-3 days only in Spanish, which made him very happy and proud, but then I slid back into my regular behavior.