Welcome to Brescia

After our first train had been a good four hours, we were quite surprised when, 40 minutes out of Milan, we arrived in Brescia (a place none of us had heard of). Our camp director (an eccentric Italian lady with a shock of orange hair) met us at the station and whisked us off in her car en route to Concesio - the place where our camp was to be.

Originally I had wanted to teach older children in a small camp, made up of tutors from orientation; what we were given was a large camp of children - the oldest being 11 - and we were to be joined by four more experienced tutors. We weren't to meet our fellow campers until that evening.

Kitty was dropped off first and the camp director gave a glowing reference of her new family - talk about full of praise. Lucky Kitty, methinks. Then it was Lydia's turn - yet more A* quality - the family seemed truly angelic. Then it was me. We made polite small talk in the car; I revealed my Italian expertise, which was received with surprise, giving hope to the fact my application probably hadn't been scrutinised that closely: my origami would live to die another day...

After that brief interchange we fell silent and soon arrived. As we walked through a rusty gate and into a dark hallway the camp director looked over to me and said,

"The house has a history."

Oh. Where was my exceptional familial review? Aren't there any nice things you have to say about them? Can't you at least give me some information!

Then I met my mum.

I was welcomed into her home, introduced to her charming daughters, given the house keys, and left to take it all in by having a well-earned nap. It was not a restful nap; my thoughts were plenty: who were these people? How should I behave? What if I offend them? What do they expect of me?

I confess there were feelings of regret - granted it was only two weeks, but two weeks is a long time if you're not enjoying yourself. I thought of my Sanremo friends all having identical experiences at the very same moment. My mood wasn't helped by the weather - it had turned strangely mysterious and the thunderclouds had rolled in. Talk about pathetic fallacy...

I wasn't given long to ponder these issues as I was soon delivered to the school to meet the rest of the tutors, so off I popped with my mum (whose name I had already forgotten) to meet some more people that I was to spend the next two weeks getting to know.