brie

my fav french cheese... but also the name a beautiful village just north of angoulême. i've spent the last week here catching up with the carlotti's - my old host family. they live in a gorgeous stone house that was built in 1900. it was originally an old barn-house, so theres lots of smaller stone buildings surrounding the house (pig houses and straw barns, most of which are now used for storage/garages, as well as one which has become jean-michel's impressive wine cellar...)

naturally, i've been eating as much french food as possible. yesterday we figured out how to spit-roast a duck in the oven (delish), i dug a bit too far into the bag of pains au chocolat, and so far i've sampled about 20 of the 200-ish types of cheese in charente. however, there's a few things i've decided to leave on the plate ...andouillette (pig's stomach), and bourdon noir (blood sausage), to name a couple.

we were even lucky enough to have nice weather this week, so fleur, iris and i dug up some bikes and went for a ride in the forest.
i love spending time down here, & will definitely be sad to leave. that incred swimming pool will have to  wait until summer...

S.

les boussats

after a looooooooong 28 hours of flights & and a stopover in hong kong, i landed in paris at 6am. cold. cold. cold. i had a 2 hour wait for my tgv, and the temp was sitting around 1º... froid! 

i'm spending the next few weeks with my old host family (from when i did an exchange in '08) in angoulême. i got there around midday, with jean-michel, christel & iris there to pick me up. we rushed back home to prepare for fleur's birthday surprise...which involved wrapping me up in a box with sheets and tablecloths. fleur (my host sis) had no idea that i was coming to visit, so the look on her face when she discovered i was under all the wrapping was priceless & definitely worth being wrapped in a box for 20 minutes.

french holidays don't start until the end of this week, so i've been able to kick-back & get over the jet-lag... aka sleep and do nothing. it was a beautiful day today once the sun came out, so i chucked some wellington's on, headed outside and snapped some photos...

c'est parti mon kiki!

S.

apparently 'stop' is a french word these days