Speaking through water

When you don’t understand your surroundings it is sometimes easy to ignore them. Imagine that you are sitting at the bottom of a pool. You can see distorted bodies of people swimming above you. Sometimes people dive down to your level and you can see them more clearly. This is kind of the way I would describe being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. People may be speaking around you or even speaking to you but it takes a lot of effort to understand what they are saying, like they are speaking through water.