Scribbles

To celebrate the end of our grueling week of midterms and relentless course work, my French neighbor suggested a brilliant idea – inviting all the team members of all the residents of Montmélian for a Friday night dinner social. Although we’ve been inviting people from various houses over for dinner on many occasions, we’ve never done anything on this scale. With 4 to 5 people per team, we were looking at 40+ guests. There was no way our dining room or outside patio could accommodate that many people. And how were we going to prepare enough food? Not one to suggest ideas without the solution, our resident Frenchy came up with lining up tables in the hall on the ground floor and running a potluck* dinner – each team responsible for bringing some food or drink. Under the organization of our diligent planner, we bought the necessary supplies (including of course kilos of delicious cheeses) and setup the arrangements for our guests.

Even though the date conflicted with the aforementioned Lebanese dinner, we decided to go through with it since we had already made the invites earlier, and after all, we know that it’s not easy passing up a chance to attend one of Monty’s infamously fun parties. Besides, this would be a great warm up for our huge party in two weeks.

Like everyone else who visits our chateau for the first time, our guests simply loved the drive in the forest leading to the spectacular view of our home. We couldn’t hear enough compliments about it. Soon after settling in, with the pleasant company, food and drink, people were mixing it up and enjoying themselves. We set a relaxing mood with some good music and played hosts to our best extent. Throughout the night, each of us gave guided tours of the whole chateau. In terms of division of labor, I assumed pizza heating duty. Because of the limited oven size, I would continuously bake and serve pizzas one by one. I had a pretty good system going, my cell phone alarm would go off every 20 minutes and I’d break off from some lovely conversation with our guests and scurry up to the kitchen. But their disappointment was more than made up for when I came back, and don’t even bother trying to convince me the smiles on their faces had more to do with the hot food than seeing my return.

In the main hall, you could feel the energy of the crowd. The delight of our guests was palpable and we were thrilled to help them start the weekend with such a gathering. The photo below was taken before it filled up. At one point, there was no walking room so you’d have to introduce yourself to each lovely guest in your path and make a new acquaintance before passing.

Half of our Monty gang – Thank the guy
in the bottom middle for this party.

After most of the people left, we hosts decided to entertain the remaining guests in a more intimate setting. We moved the music and wine upstairs to the dining hall. In a blink of an eye, our resident Salsa man from Peru had us dancing to hot latin tunes. As much fun as it was, our last batch of guests reluctantly departed around 2:30 – too early for my taste if you ask. Still, great fun for the night. I realize now how much we actually enjoy hosting our friends. I wonder if the nobles who lived here 300 years ago felt the same.

* The concept of potluck was completely foreign to some of our residents and guests. Back in their respective countries, they wouldn’t fathom inviting guests and then asking them to bring something. I’ll chalk that one up to a cultural learning experience.