Corsica!

My heart is hurting; for the nations, for the broken people of the world. I see and meet people every day that each have a story, have pain, have dreams that have been dashed. But amidst all of this I see people filled with joy, with hope, with determination to defeat defeat. And it’s beautiful.

In Corsica we met a man, Patrice, who was actually our landlord. He was this charming, sweet older French man who has little houses that he rents to people like us! I seriously don’t know how we could have seen any of Corsica, let alone survived without our lovely grandpa. On one of the many couple hour sightseeing drives we would take throughout our 4 days, he told us about his life. (Rather he told Taylor in French and then Taylor filled in the gaps for me later :]) BUT, one story stuck out. He has been to Africa a couple times and he was telling us about his trips to Morocco. The first time he interacted with Morocco he was with a humanitarian organization. He found practically new water filters, fixed them up and then sent them to a village. The village people received them and called to tell him they didn’t work. He then flew down only to discover that the government had switched the new with old broken ones. After this, he hand delivers everything himself, usually once about every 2 years.

He then said he’d like to move there one day. Taylor asked him why and he basically replied that he was too old to get a job or be useful here, but that he could actually do something there. He could teach, help, and be in community there, unlike here in France.

Here’s a man who has essentially rearranged his life for Taylor and I while we’ve been here. He’s driven us everywhere, taught us the history of Corsica, and told us the best places to see, all while joking and laughing that we’re only here for four days and want to see Corsica. Our first meeting he was teaching us the history of Corsica and I really didn’t understand most all of it. So, naturally, I was sleepy from lack of sleep, getting up early for our flight, and the warm sunshine wasn’t helping. Every time I would yawn he would jokingly scold me!

Corisca was great. We got to hitchhike to essentially our own private beach, get scared by a charging momma cow on the walk home, take a 7 hour, 8 mile hike which included eating lunch on rocks in a river, playing with some donkeys, getting chased by while pigs and a bull (not really, but we ran anyways after our experience the day before, only passing when they walked away and with rocks and sticks in our hands, you know, just to be safe :]),  and end about 2 miles away from our destination. We got to ride horses through the mountains of Corsica, make our own meals, eat and drink authentic Corsica wine, cheese, jam, coffee and honey. Essentially we got to live a dream life.

However, amazing this trip was, I’m realizing the importance of having community, being in relationships, and having other people to experience life with. All these things are amazing, incredible, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and I’m so happy to have them; however, I’m also excited to go back to living in community again, going through the ups and downs, living an exciting life in the normal day to day!

However, our adventure is not over yet! Taking a ferry tomorrow to our next stop! Pictures from Corsica below!

French press... The French understand.

Our little kitchen!

Local home cooked Ravioli, wine, bread, and meat & veggie sauce!

The river and mountains behind the beach

The momma cow that started to charge us. So we climbed through a barbed wire fence to walk on the other side and thus escape bodily harm

Our dog friend that we met on our hike :)

I spoke to the French animals in French.

The spot we stopped for lunch

The villages were just charming :)