The summer camp

What you can expect!

In the framing story, you will encounter the four main characters Thelma, Natalya, Paolo and Max.  

They find themselves in a summer camp at the French coast...if you want to know more, use the audio underneath the image or read the story yourselves. Have fun!

Three weeks of summer camp in the beautiful south of France attract 50 students from many countries each year. Hosted in big tents, the youngsters spend exciting holidays at the seaside with excursions and leisure time programme. Internationality plays a big role for the camp. Paolo, Max, Natalya and Thelma are among the happy this summer to have got a place.

A summer camp in the beautiful South France attracts fifty young people from manyl countries. For three weeks, they live together in large tents and enjoy a sunny holiday at the seaside with excursions and a good recreational program. The international atmosphere is one of the main attractions of this cam p.
Among the lucky ones to have a place are Paolo, Max, Natalya and Thelma. They come from different countries and are between 14 and 18 years old. Do you want to know more about them? Here they are:

Paolo (18) and Max (14) camp in a tent together with four other boys. Paolo is Italian and a typical rebel.. He would have much preferred to have gone to Genoa with some of his friends, but due to his bad school results his parents decided to send him to summer camp and away from the boozy parties of his  mates.
Paolo is a good-looking guy and knows how to use his charm well. He is usually in the middle of any trouble or nonsense, but as soon as the supervisors intervene, he is all innocence and always  manages to escape punishment. While the other guys are made to peel potatoes for the whole camp Paolo is relaxing at the beach listening to music and getting a tan.
His tent mate Max is his exact opposite. He is from Germany, a single child, and his parents have problems making ends meet financiallly. So Max has learned to make lots happen on small means. Max, some four years younger than Paolo, admires Paolo’s easy style a lot and lets himself get drawn into some adventures despite his more shy and withdrawn character. As an introvert guy Max loves to write stories and prefers to stay in the shadow with his fair skin, pen and paper always to the ready.

Probably it’s their contrary personalities that draw Paolo and Max towards each other and they soon become friends. Max likes Paolo’s dare-devil style, and Paolo finds Max’s calm character very relaxing.
In the beginning Max keeps his stories to himself, but Paolo becomes curious and when Max tells him his first story at the little lake in the woods, Max is very excited. From that day on, the two friends go regularly to the lake where they just talk, or Max tells a story and Paolo listens, staring dreamingly into the sky and watching the moving pine trees above their heads.

Natalya (17) and Thelma (16) also live in the same tent, together with some other girls. Natalya is Romanian and comes from a “fairy tale family” with four siblings and a lot of fun and laughter. Natalya has a very sunny character and loves company, music and dancing. Her tent has been named “le ris” (the laughter) as there seems to be fun und laughing all the time. She wants to become a famous actress. She is not a very orderly person, she detests cleaning up and sees this as a waste of time. So she is often unable to trace down her own belongings in her self-created chaos. But this only makes her even more likable.

Thelma comes from a small town in southern England. She is very pretty and taller than most boys in her year. She loves sports and has already won several prizes in national and international competitions. She is also the top of her class, and this is very important to her parents. Thelma has very fair skin and gets sunburnt easily and develops a lot of freckles even if she stays in the sun for the shortest while. She has long red and curly hair and looks like a typical “English girl”.
Thelma has been looking forward to the summer camp a lot - being away from her nice, but demanding parents for a while and meeting lots of nice people from different countries is attractive.

Right from the beginning, Natalya and Thelma have liked each other very much and quickly start to share their most important secrets. One afternoon, Thelma comes into the tent to find Natalya staring into a small hand mirror and looking very unhappy. “What’s the matter?” Thelma asks, approaching her. Natalya turns around, taken aback, but is relieved when she sees that it is Thelma. Tears are in her eyes, and she is looking angry. “I’m so ugly” she says and slams her hairbrush against the wall. “Why? You are not ugly, what are you talking about?” Thelma asks astonished.

“Don’t you see these horrible spots everywhere on my face?” Natalya answers furiously. “I haven’t been able to get rid of them for years, they are  so awful, I have tried so many things, but nothing helps. Looking like this, I will never get a boyfriend because I look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame!” Thelma looks at her. “Not completely,” she says dryly, “I mean, the hanging eye may be quite right, but your back doesn’t look that bad.” The two girls burst into fits of giggles.

Then Thelma thinks a little. “You know, you can go and see a doctor for this,” she says quietly.” My skin isn’t always so good as this, especially when I get my period. Maybe you can go and see a doctor when you are home again?” Natalya looks at her. “You can go to see a doctor with this?” Thelma nods. “Of course. I don’t know how it is in your country, but maybe you can go to your family doctor and ask.” Natalya looks relieved. “Ok, I’ll try when I’m home again, but what will I do here? - I don’t know.”  Thelma shrugs and says: “But you are not ugly . Have you not noticed the looks the boys are giving you?” She smiles. “They don’t care about spots, as most of them have much worse ones than you , believe me. See you later!”

And how do our four friends finally meet?

After supper, the young people sit around either the campfire or in front of the tents, playing cards, and  listening to music. Outside the campground, it’s pitch-black dark.
Paolo and Max pick their backpacks and creep out of their tent and around the corner. They plan to stay out at the lake for the night. Paolo leads Max off the path and into the wood. On the path they might be seen more easily, so they start crawling through the prickly undergrowth.

They are not the only people in the woods that night. Natalya and Thelma creep through the bushes too and tell each other the craziest stories about supervisors and teachers. They are giggling a lot. “Are you certain that we are still going in the right direction for the pond?” Natalya sounds a bit worried. “I hope so, “says Thelma, pushing some branches aside.

Max and Paolo seem to have lost their way as well. The fact that they forgot to take their torches doesn’t make it easier for them. It’s rather dark under the large trees, and they are surrounded by strange noises in the wood , crackles and squeaks and the sound of many small feet running away. And then more heavier steps. “Is there anybody there?” Max is asking under his voice to Paolo. Paolo signs to him to be quiet.

Thelma and Natalya walk on. “What was that?” Natalya asks who doesn’t really like the darkness and starts to feel nervous. “I don’t know. Wait,” whispers Thelma and switches off her torch. The girls stand motionless. Everything is quiet. “I think it’s okay, let’s go on,” says Thelma, switching on her torch again. After some steps their torch light suddenly falls on a man. Both girls start screaming.

Paolo starts speaking first, in an ironic tone: “Young ladies shouldn’t be out in the woods at that time of the night any more, should they?” Max then shows up in the light as well, and they recognize each other and start laughing. “Where are you going?” Natalya asks. “To the pond over there, but we seem to have lost our way,” Max says. “The same with us,” Thelma says, “I’m not sure in which direction we should go. We have lost our sense of direction completely in this awful undergrowth. ” They decide to go on together and stumble on for a while. After some minutes something green and metallic appears in the beam of Thelma’s torch. “Ah, that looks interesting,” Paolo says. It’s a very old and rusty garden door. They look at each other with shining eyes. After some rattling, the door opens with a squeaking noise and they enter a garden that has been allowed to run wild. In the background they see an old house, neglected, some of the windows broken and the shutters hanging askew.

This is the discovery of their vacation! Of course, they start to explore the abandoned villa, meeting there whenever they can find the time. It is their secret place. They get closer to each other: Thelma admires Paolo very much – will they become a couple? Max and Natalya start to become friends as well – but just friends – and they feel a bit sceptical towards the growing relationship between their two friends.