SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE LIVING IN CAGLI is like living on an island, an island that is relatively free from an outside touch. Far enough away that those that live here can create their own type of lifestyle, hold on to their centuries-old traditions, and most of all, far enough away that Cagli can be a very safe and trusting town. Yet, at the same time, Cagli is close enough to other places that pretty much anything is within reach.
      Once you travel to the “mainland” (outside of Cagli) though, things change. It’s incredibly apparent that you’re not in Kansas— err— Cagli anymore. Things you began to take for granted before don’t exist. Doors are kept tightly locked, bags zipped and close to your side. Beggars line the streets and around every corner there is someone trying to sell you something. Everyone on the mainland wants to take your money in some form.
      As weird as it may sound, when you leave the island, it’s almost as if things and people become “less Italian”. In other words, so many of the traditions the small town of Cagli has been able to preserve have been lost in the chaos of the mainland. For instance, in Cagli, when you ask businesses if they feel any competition with other businesses of their kind, they’ll look at you funny. They just want to supply their fellow townspeople with what they need. If they don’t have it, they’ll send you somewhere that does. I can guarantee that that is not how the shops work in Florence.
       Another more obvious thing that makes the “mainland” seem “less Italian” is the fact that the majority of the language you hear in the big cities is not Italian. It is English. You’re trying your hardest to speak the little Italian you know in order to get your point across, and they respond to you in English. Then you think “Weird. I though I was in Italy.”

--Maggie Shellenberger
(Gonzaga)