Living Coast - Greta and the Penguins...

I am Greta, I am 18 years old and a student from Germany. I did my 2 weeks work experience at Living Coasts. It was a wonderful and awesome time! All the staff was very friendly and attentive, that was one of the first things I noticed at my first working day.

In the first week I worked at the the 'Education Department'. In the summer that means that there is a lot to do with groups of children but in the winter there isn't much to do so I did some research for a new area about sea turtles and the new 'Pole to Pole Campaign' what was very interesting because I learned pretty much. In the second week I worked at the 'Animal Department'. That was a week with hard work but also around the different animals. For example the penguins: Every morning I had to rake the sand of the huge penguin beach to clean it from leaves. That was quite exhausting but all the time the penguins were directly around me and some of them also wanted to play with the rake or my feet. Afterwards I was allowed to feed the penguins what was really amazing! Besides I fed the seals what was great because they catch every fish I threw to them. Of course there was also some kind of work that was not interesting. I worked in the kitchen what means cutting fish and squids, weighing fish for different animals or doing the washing up. To be honest

more than half of the time was like that but I forgot that while feeding the animals. Later I often worked with the different animals inside. I cleaned the aquariums, checked temperatures and salinities and fed again some animals. There were many several aquariums with seahorses, crabs, a lobster, rays and a lot of other fish. I gave food to all of them what was really interesting because they all eat in their own special way. For example the octopus that gets living crabs or the seahorses that have no stomach and get their food every few hours.

At the weekend I also did a few trips, for example to Exeter, Brixham or Dartmoor. My great hostfamily drove with a friend of mine and me to the Buckfast Abbey and afterwards we drove through the Dartmoor.

That was an amazing experience because it is very different to Germany and we saw some wild ponies. We stopped and my friend and I were able to stroke them. That was unique because in Germany are no wild ponies.

Travelling to England with the Training Partnership was a very good idea! It was a excellent chance to improve my English and getting more confident with the different language. It was a gorgeous time and I hope I will come back in the future!

Hello from Cyrille, TTPL work placement student

My name is Cyrille, I am a 21 year old boy from Belgium. I had to do a 15-week internship in a foreign language company for my last year of school. So I chose to go abroad to improve my English. I contacted WEP Belgium to organize my internship, everything went well and they found me an accommodation and a work placement at the Training Partnership Ltd in Torquay, United Kingdom.

The day of my departure, I was a little stressed but now I know I didn’t have to.

I arrived in Torquay on the 2^nd February; the taxi driver showed me a bit of the town and then brought me to my lovely host family that will have to put up with me.

Now I am working for The Training Partnership Ltd. The first day I saw the office and the staff, I knew I would love working here, and I was right!

This is my first week here and I can tell that people here are very nice and really help me feel comfortable. I already thank them for being that kind with me!

For now, the only defects I found about England are the rain and the cars driving on the ”wrong”  left side of the road haha.

Gianluca...Working at Living Coasts

My name is Gianluca and I am an 18 year old student from Germany. I came to Torquay for a 2 weeks lasting work placement. The Training Partnership chose the Zoo and Aquarium Living Coasts to be the right place to work for me.The first thing I noticed on my first day was, that the whole staff was very friendly and open minded. That helped me feeling confident, although English is not my mother tongue. But getting along with the language emerged to be very easy, taking new instructions and tasks never was a problem.

Working in the animal department was exhausting, but mostly fun.  There were two different sides of work. On the one hand I was allowed to be right next to animals, which is very interesting. Arousing the sand of the penguin beach with a rake was a lot of work, but being in touch with the cute penguins was a great and unique experience as well. Additional to that I was allowed to feed seals, and loads of birds I can not name, rays, seahorses and jellyfish in the aquarium ect…. On the other hand there was also work, which was not so much fun, but it also had to be done.  Loads of food had to be prepared for the animals. That means: Cutting loads of sprats and other fish into small pieces, handle quids and care for meal worms. I don’t know if you can imagine the smell in the kitchen, which you carry home in your clothes as well of course. Again this is a unique opportunity to see what happens behind the walls of a coastal Zoo. Animals can not really help you to improve your English, but talking to a lot of people really does. Most of the employees were very talkative and interested in my personal background, so I got a lot of chances to take part in conversations. My vocabulary didn’t grow a lot during this short time, but I got a lot more used to use the language actively. Finally a chance to realise, that the huge effort at school pays off. You overcome your inhibition level faster than before and feel more self-confident about the language than before.

In conclusion I have to say, that the impressions I got here will last forever, I am glad that I have been here!