An unexpected task

I am an animal science student from Brazil. The internship arranged for me was in an Australian zoo. Although I had taken an English course before starting the internship, when I first started I was completely lost with the language. After a few weeks working at the zoo every day, I found myself gaining a little more confidence to talk, and I could finally understand Australian slang (at least most of it).

After working a month at the zoo, most of the staff already knew me, and I felt they were starting to lack new tasks for me. One day, among 15 Australian interns, I was called to guide a blind man through the zoo. That day, I saw that my range of vocabulary was terrible. I have asked the blind guy, like a hundred time, if he had already SEEN that or this animal. I could not find a word to substitute the verb to SEE.

Luckily, the guy was completely good tempered. He just laugh at me, and answered that he would love me to take him to hear or to pet the animals. At the end of the day, obviously, I apologized for all the misunderstanding, but he said that was totally ok, that I was such a good guide, and he understood I was a foreign, not yet fluent.

The zookeeper who I was working with that day laugh at me too, and I told her. Although frustrating, the experience was really good for me. I wasn’t used to work with PEOPLE. After that day, I felt I was ready for anything.