BY ANA VECIANA-SUAREZ
Herald Staff Writer

Ariel Gil never thought his fluency in Russian would open doors in the United States. But that's exactly what it did.

Soon after he arrived alone from Cuba at age 20 during the Mariel boatlift, Gil moved to Queens, N.Y., to be reunited with his godparents. While attending English classes, he landed a job in Brighton Beach answering phones at a school for Russian immigrants. He was paid $75 a week. ''It felt like a million dollars to me,'' he says now with a wry laugh.

From there, he worked clearing dishes at an Italian restaurant, shoveling snow as a porter and cleaning bathrooms at a Dunkin Donuts. All along, he had his sights on one thing: an education.

He received seven rejection letters before being admitted to the prestigious Columbia University's Teachers College. Then, three years after the boatlift, he earned his master's degree. Success, however, was tempered with loneliness.

''I lived in a basement apartment, totally alone, and it was actually very sad,'' he said.

His first job was teaching at a public school on Governor's Island, right across from the Statue of Liberty. The symbolism was not lost on the new refugee, who worked with mostly Jewish teachers whose ancestors had gone through Ellis Island.

Gil settled in Miami in 1990, when his father came to the United States. He is now a doctoral candidate in higher education and leadership at Barry University. After stints working at Miami Dade College and St. Thomas University, he became director of institutional effectiveness at Miami International University of Art and Design in downtown Miami.

Last summer he studied in Bulgaria as a Fulbright Scholar for about six weeks. ''Once again my Russian came in handy,'' he says. Gil learned Russian in Cuba, when, at 14, he was selected to attend a language school for translators and interpreters. For four years he lived with a Russian family and attended intensive immersion courses. ''I learned to love the culture and the people through the language,'' he says.

The youngest of three sons, he told his family he was leaving through Mariel only an hour before. Then he spent 16 days waiting to depart, eating half-raw rice, scrambled eggs that had turned green and plain yogurt that he usually gave away to a scrawny 12-year-old boy in his camp. Tadpoles swam in the tank that stored drinking water.

He now looks back at that time with a mix of awe and revulsion. ''It was the Mariel diet,'' he says. ``Everybody lost weight.''

He returned to Cuba last year to visit his ailing mother, a trip he labels as ''very traumatic'' because of the despair he witnessed among family and friends.

'I look back and say, `What would've happened to me had I stayed? What would have become of my dreams?' '' he says. ``That's why I'm so grateful to be in this country.''