The Post Office

by AJ Davila

Last Friday, I decided that I wanted to ship my souvenirs home so that I wouldn’t have to pack it out with me. I didn’t have much, but I figured sending it home would save me the hassle from having to claim it going through customs. I was kind of hesitant to use the local post office in Cagle beings that I could not speak Italian very well.

I knew where the post office was, but had no idea how the postal system worked here. In all the years of traveling around the world, every post office has a different way of doing things and different forms to fill out. In the US, you can pretty much go to any post office and find the same style of forms with a standard way of shipping things. I assumed that the Italian post office system would have a systematic way of doing things like we do in the US. However, it seemed to be a simpler systems or it was my inability to effectively communicate in Italian that got me the “easy road” of not filing massive international forms to send my stuff.

While trying to communicate for five minutes that I needed a box, between the 3 post office personnel and their supervisor, I was finally able to get the box I needed and the one form to fill out. I was surprised that I only needed to fill out a simple “return address/receive address” form that required nothing more. I was confused thinking that their needed to be more beings that this package was going overseas to the United States. With the massive language barrier, I then started to wonder if my package would even make it at all.

After trying to figure out where exactly my box would be going and when it would get there, the only thing that I was sure of was that I paid a decent price to get the box shipped. Once I paid for my shipping, I figured I would just have to wait and see if my box would get there ok. Since the return address that I put on the box was my own address, I assumed it would reach me regardless, I hope.

I think that the language barrier was probably the hardest thing about the whole situation. Most places that I’ve been to in Cagli, the people understood some English and I knew enough Italian/Spanish to get me by: plus that fact that most of the time it was ordering food, I wasn’t worried if it came out different. Here I was, at the post office spending 30 Euro’s to send 150 Euro’s worth of souvenirs home, and who knows if they will get there. I pretty much have to keep telling myself that the system will work. Just because it is a small town in a foreign country, doesn’t mean they don’t know how to send packages overseas.

In the end, it was just souvenir stuff and nothing of real importance. If it doesn’t reach my house, I hope that wherever it goes, the people enjoy the gifts.