Nous sommes en Corse

First off, we're snatching the wireless signal from the University of Corsica in Corte (a medieval town pronounced Corti surrounded by steep mountains) in our teeny Renault twingo--which looks like a minivan until you get the true scale of the vehicle and realize that it's smaller than a vw bug. Second off, for some reason, all the tabs and commands on this blog host are now in French, making me feel equally alienated online and off. Third off, because of the first and second offs, I am not going to put captions under these pictures. Rather, I will let the pictures tell their own story--the story of Sarah and Jackson and I packing up our Brooklyn apartment into a Uhaul, flying to NIce, buying a little car, taking the car (packed to each and every gill) on a big boat to Corsica, finding our little village and establishing a life here in the mountains. Our town is called Venaco. It has maybe 400 inhabitants at high season, but at the moment, it feels like there are maybe 50 here. Our little maison has wood beams in the ceiling and incredible views. There is a bakery and a butcher (though the butcher hasn't been open yet) a post, a bar and the mayor's office. If you open our wooden door/gate and turn left down the little stone alleyway and walk for 50 meters or so (go metric), you come to a little fountain (called la source) where pure spring water flows from the mouth of a little stone lion. Today, we walked past that source (after taking a quick drink), pulled open a little iron gate, walked past a couple donkeys and found a trail that led through the mountains. Walking home, we realized that our house is pretty much on that trail, as you make no turns to get from it to us. Jackson and I are feeling really close at the moment. We speak about equal amounts of French. Sarah, on the other hand, is fantastic. She has taken very good care of us.

It is absolutely silent here. At night, the only sounds are the church bells on the hour and the half (just 2 dings on the half). Perhaps the silence helps our appreciation of the food--or maybe the food is actually that good. We've been using a lot of chesnut flour (the local specialty), drinking very fresh milk, getting eggs that are hand selected out of a big basket, eating a lot of chocolate, devouring baguettes, drinking cheap wine and the local beer--Pietra. We also heat our home with the fireplace. There's a big pile of wood in our little garden, which we gather at night and bring out the ashes in the morning.

Okay, enough English. Here are the pictures.
Despite all the above, we do miss you (whoever you are) and would like very much for you to come and stay for a month or so.

bisous,
sarah, jackson and david