YOU'D THINK A TOWN LIKE CAGLI would be quiet. It is tiny, with one main piazza. It is surrounded by rolling hills and mountains. Its streets are tiny, with hardly enough room for one car to fit through. The highway runs along one side of the town, but it's only two lanes and rush hour most definitely does not exist here. The airport is at least two hours away and their flight plans rarely cross over the town. The train station is an hour away, and the tracks don’t run close to Cagli. Since there aren’t a lot of people, there aren’t a lot of emergencies, so sirens aren’t a common occurrence. Basically, all the usual things that make noise in the States don’t exist here.
       Yet somehow, this town is incredibly noisy. Constantly. Between the clamor of the bells (not just every hour, but also often every fifteen minutes – and at times from multiple churches), the grinding and banging of jackhammers and saws at the various renovation sites, the revving of the diesel Vespa engines, the slamming of doors and windows in the wind, the shouts of the old men in the piazza playing cards, the laughter and screeching of young children playing hide-n-go-seek at 1, 2, even 3 in the morning on weekends, the whistles, hoots and hollers of young men trying to attract the attention of passing young ladies, the random bursts of American music coming from the homes of local teenagers, the screeching of brakes from all the miniature European cars, and finally the naturally loud voices of Italians' conversations as they walk down the street… this town is far from quiet. And then the fact that all of the buildings are built of hard materials and stand incredibly close together magnifies all of these sounds and makes them echo so that they sound like they’re all happening right there next to you.
       Even where I live at home, less than ten minutes from downtown Seattle, I’m rarely woken up at night by noises outside my window. Maybe it’s the trees, or the yards that separate homes, or the materials that the buildings are made out of. Or maybe its that I’m simply used to them. They are what I know, what I grew up with. To me, they are not longer many separate noises like I hear in Cagli. They are one collective noise that just sounds like home.

--Maggie Shellenberger
(Gonzaga)