Sara and David outside AlteArte, their mojito bar and art lounge in Altea, Spain.

Only nine months after being laid off from our jobs in New York, my husband and I were about to open the doors to our brand-new bar and art gallery in Altea, Spain. We’d invested our life savings and the renovations had just been completed.

I tentatively stepped behind the bar and ran my fingers along the newly painted counter. I checked the glasses hanging above me. The physical space was ready. But, as I looked at myself in the reflection of the mirror, I wondered how exactly I, an Asian American with no bar or restaurant experience, fit into this picture.

David, my Spanish husband (we met in France), and I had never planned on opening a business in this small, picturesque town on the Mediterranean coast. But a chain of events had led us to this point: the double layoff; a rash decision to help my father-in-law with a restaurant that he was opening in Spain; and a quick scramble for Plan B when the family business didn’t go as smoothly as we had hoped.

A thousand doubts raced through my head as I scanned the bottles of alcohol on the shelf behind me. I had started to fear that I would be a hindrance to the business. For starters, would I even be able to do something as simple as take an order? My knowledge of Spanish was so poor that I didn’t even know “hasta luego” when I stepped off the plane in my new country. Since then, I had enrolled in a class at the town’s cultural center, but my progress was slow. Our bar’s opening loomed, and I’d only just gotten to the point where I could formulate very simple and rehearsed sentences like, “The bathroom is upstairs.”

“Would my complete ignorance of the Spanish culture make it hard for me to relate to our new customers, or them to me?”

I wanted to blend in, yet I knew that my Asian heritage and my American accent accomplished the exact opposite. Since arriving in Spain, I’d let David handle everything from banking to negotiating the lease to finding a carpenter to build tables for our new business.

I feared that being an outsider would hurt the business which, under its previous Altea-born-and-raised owner, Pepe, had been a favorite among the locals. Would my complete ignorance of the Spanish culture make it hard for me to relate to our new customers, or them to me? And David was no local either. Even though he was born in Spain, he had grown up in France, and my in-laws lived an hour away and were busy with their own business, so every decision we had to make, from which music to play to which drinks to offer to which hours to open, felt like a complete shot in the dark.

But I could no longer stand on the sidelines. Instead, I calmed my pounding heart and took my position behind the bar, awaiting the customers who would put me to the test. I didn’t know which would be worse—an empty house, or a bar full of people expecting Pepe and getting me, someone who would surely mess up their orders or stand there speechless with stage fright.

It wasn’t long before a Norwegian friend from my Spanish class entered with her boyfriend. A short time later, another classmate, Sissel, entered with 10 friends in tow. I frantically reviewed my notes from the crash course Pepe had given us and started preparing their drinks. I looked around at our crowded bar and couldn’t help but feel proud.

As the hour got later, the local Spanish customers flooded in. But rather than snicker and make fun of me or turn away in disgust, they spoke slowly and repeated their orders when necessary. Over the weeks that followed, they were patient with my minimal Spanish, and some even made an attempt to speak to me in English. This small gesture of kindness created a bond as we laughed over our struggle to communicate.

Our customer base continued to grow and we became known for good service. I grew up in the United States, where the customer is king—delivering good service runs in my DNA. It’s so ingrained in me that, from the beginning, I made it a priority to greet customers as soon as they walked in the door, to remember repeat customers’ names along with their favorite drinks, and to check on the tables regularly to make sure that the customers never felt neglected. Our patrons were impressed, sometimes to a level that left me confused. But, after living in Spain awhile longer, I saw that the level of service isn’t as solicitous as in the U.S., and I came to understand why just by giving the service I’d grown used to experiencing helped us stand out from the competition.

I had been so ashamed of my limited Spanish that I didn’t even realize what an advantage it would be that I could speak English fluently. We’d fallen so instantly in love with Altea’s old town and its cobbled streets, white-washed houses, and breathtaking views of the mountains and Mediterranean Sea that we had spontaneously moved there before discovering it is home to a large community of expats—English, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, etc.—for whom the common language is English, not Spanish. Thanks to my English, I was able to instantly connect with this segment of Altean residents and put them at ease in a way that I never would have been able to if I only spoke Spanish.

As the months passed and my Spanish improved, I was able to serve as a link between the ex-pats and long-time Alteans: I introduced a Finnish woman interested in salsa dancing to a Spanish man was also interested in dancing; and a Norwegian friend to an Altean who had vegetables to sell her from his very own garden. Our bar became a place where English and Spanish learners could meet each other and improve their language skills.

It took the arrival of a Lithuanian student who came to the bar specifically looking for the “girl from California” to make me realize that people were talking about us—in a good way. It was OK that we weren’t born and raised in Altea. We brought something special with us. In fact, since I was raised in California and David and I moved here from New York, we were seen as “exotic.”

When I arrived, I had been so focused on what I lacked that I overlooked the value of my innate qualities. I had assumed that my American background was a bad thing because it made me different, but in some ways that gave me an advantage. Sometimes, thriving in another country isn’t about hiding who you are in order to fit in. It’s about embracing what you bring to the table and then artfully combining the two cultures to form a unique tapestry.

As for the language barrier, I realized that even when I have had to grasp for words, a smile coupled with a willingness to learn speaks volumes.

Sara Wilson is a writer and the co-owner of AlteArte, a mojito bar and art lounge in Altea, Spain. She is currently working on a book about her life along the Costa Blanca.