Pendaison de crémaillère

We are such slackers! Sorry, sorry, sorries all around. We we're partying! We had our housewarming soirée last weekend, and lo and behold found out that we apparently know a ton more people in Paris then we realized. At one point we had probably twenty people over! Which confirms that our new apartment is significantly larger than our old apartment as twenty people would never have fit into the old place. Best of all, we had my buddies Larry and Natasha in visiting from the U.S. to boot.

For those who want a little language lesson, a housewarming in France is called a crémaillère which is actually a notched hook of sorts that used to go up in the chimney. The cooking cauldron would be hung from it, and depending upon which notch it was hanging from you could adjust the amount of heat hitting the cauldron. Because you couldn't cook before the crémaillère was hung, you would usually have your friends and family over to cook a little something when you finally got it up, and thus, Pendaison de crémaillère (hanging of the crémaillère)became the French equivalent of having a housewarming party. Hilariously, our neighbors, who it turns out also just moved in, had their crémaillère the same night, so we had a bunch of temporary, highly-confused French guests who walked in for a second before realizing they were in a den of expats and quickly high-tailing it to the correct party à côté de notre appartement.