Snorkeling is something else because you stay close to the surface, close to what you know and what is familiar. If anything happened while I was snorkeling, I could easily sit up on a rock and stand up. But scuba diving? I was about eight feet underwater. I couldn’t just stand up on a rock and be okay.
I think that was the same feeling that I had when I decided to study in Thailand. I had studied abroad in Northern Ireland in Belfast for a semester during my junior year of college. I had survived three months in the UK, touring Ireland and Scotland, and it was the most amazing experience ever. But it was familiar because they spoke English everywhere I went. If something happened, like getting lost or getting hurt, I was positive that I could communicate with people to get help. I could stand on my own if things started to look difficult. While studying in Thailand, my experience has been much more different. If I do happen to get lost, the chances of someone understanding me decrease the farther away I go from the University. I have to be confident enough about where I am going when I leave my apartment. If I do happen to get lost, I have to be sure enough that I will not panic and that I can find my way home, one way or another. I don’t have English to rely on because I am living in a foreign country whose primary language is not English.
Before I came to Thailand, I felt very much the same way I felt before I went scuba diving. Standing in the airport back home, ticket and passport in hand, was very much the same as standing at the edge of the boat, one hand on my weight belt and the other plugging my nose over the dive mask.
