Hosting a burnt marshmello party-

I ate some icecream today. I've been wanted icecream for months. Well, usually I don't really care about icecream, but here in Vancouver I have a fantastic roommate named Emily. She's 6'1, writes poems, is a babe, and we get along famously. She's like my favorite mission companian. And I'm not even in Guatemala yet. She went on a mission to France. Deane, I told her to call you and talk in French. You will love her.

We had caramel rolo chocolate icecream. I quite enjoyed it. In a waffle cone. A great decision, because I started something beautiful last night and wished to make up for the joy of it all. With a heating pad and later, icecream.

Working in Whistler has its ups and downs. Firstly, I miss Dallin Sims like crazy. Yes, the 19 yr old baby. We are an item. Can you believe it? I am working out the kinks in my long distance relationship history...or rather making a history as we speak. I've never even wanted to continue a relationship from far away, because really, wouldn't it be easier to just start from scratch where you are? But I figured I'd have to start sometime, so why not now, when I've met the man of my dreams and am leaving for Guatemala in two months? It's going to be tough, there are many cool guys out here. What we have is fantastic. Like icecream. With a waffle cone. Quite delicious.

Whistler is a cold place. I don't know why it's named that, but this city could be named because of the freezing winds whistling through the trees. Or because people here whistle. Either one.

Work: I work here every other day. We just got cell phones, so people now have a way to call if their buses break down, or we can get called for our schedules etc. Also, if any of you, my readers wish to call me and have a Sprint or Nextell phone plan, we can talk for free! But who has that type of plan anyhow? If you do though, ask me and I'll send you my phone number and we'll talk for hours about Canada.

We do get paid for 5 days on, 2 days off. So we get paid whether we work or not. That's kind of nice. We also get to live in trailers for a month and a half and get three free meals a day. We had sandwiches for lunch in Vancouver, that got old pretty fast, but now we have different meals from cooks. Yay for not living in Vancouver. Plus, in V we had single rooms. Lame and lonely. I don't like having to hang out by myself. I'm no loner goon.

Vancouver has pretty narrow streets too and they're really only working one day a week, so that's doubly boring. I guess they have a ferry to ride if they want. We get free transportation in the city- it's an Olympic worker perk. Whistler's not so bad. We've gotten to church the last two weeks, but last week we accidentally went to a Spanish ward. It was in the same building as an English ward, but it was at a different time. Oops. I enjoyed it, but didn't get too much out of the talks.

Our rooms are pretty small, but I guess we don't need much when we just sit in there all day and watch movies. There's a workout place, but it's not open yet. The Olympics start Feb. 12, so that should make what we do more exciting. At least we'll have more people riding the shuttles, we're plenty slow right now. Boo. I'm sure I can rustle up something to do.

We the people-

We've got Chris: He's the boss and terribly high strung right now because nobody above him in line knows what's going on. We change meeting times all the time. It's hard to know what the times changes will be so word of mouth is gold here. Overall Chris is a chill guy, so I'm sure he'll be alright when everything goes back to normal.

Did I tell you we don't have radios? We're supposed to have cell phones but they won't work because they're American phones with Canadian sim cards. So they keep asking for a special code and we can't use them. If we get lost, we are pretty much screwed and we've only been training by driving routes for two days.

There's the Bellingham group: Tara and Justin, Josh and Ashley, and Ben. They talk mostly to each other, but they're pretty chill and funny.

There's the RCT group: Seth, Nick, Jeremy, Kersten, and Ree. They are more friendly and talk to everyone but mostly they hang out with each other.

Tyler, Rod, and Timothy are cool. They're lifelong friends and I watched Hot Rod with them. Timothy went to Russia on his mission and the other two have girlfriends. They wear beanies and are very musical. You would like them.

The older crew is: Vic, Alberto, Gregg, Rita, Neil, and Owen. Owen is from England so he has a cool accent. Rita often hangs out with the RCT group and with Gregg. Most of the older crew is married, but left their spouses at home.

The next group includes Matt, Adam, and Kevin. Kevin doesn't really look like any Kevin's I've ever met, so Emily and I were trying to figure out an alternative name for him. They are good times and all go to BYU.

The second wave of drivers comes at the end of January. Our bosses are Gail, Sue, Lloyd and their underlings are Pam, Tyler, Chase, Sarah, Alana, and Jen.

Lloyd sweats buckets and loves to talk. Gail is always sunshine and bananas. She gets us lunches and is always doing something productive.

Sue is crazy and really chill. She's like a ski supervisor. Not literally, but she kind of acts like it. Tyler runs marathons and I don't know much about all the others, but they seem nice. This was a good name practice for me. Thanks.

Now all I need to do is review all the crazy maps and turn by turns they gave us so I can drive tomorrow.

Oops oops. I forgot about Emily. Emily is my roomie. She's chill. I like her very much. We have been watching movies together and hot tubbing and being bored together. She writes in her journal and blog all the time which is why I referred you to her blog.

Vancouver-

It's pretty chill here. The first day of training, we were told to stay 10 feet from the outer perimeter fence because 10-12 drug needles are thrown over a day. Apparently they leveled some abandoned warehouses these homeless people were living in and they're angry about it. I heard they were throwing needles at people inside the fence too. Wow. I can't wait for the real action to begin.

I'll be staying in a city by Vancouver called Whistler. We learned some routes yesterday. They seem pretty easy and it's a relatively small place. We're going to be living in stacked shipping containers..I haven't been inside, but that's what our rooming looks like. We're currently living in a hotel downtown.

We should get our credentials- id badges today. We get free food and board. We get paid by the day. Pretty sweet for all the half days we're doing, but I'll let you know how awesome it is when we're getting long days. I think I need some snow boots. It's pretty slushy out here and it hasn't snowed that recently.

I'll be driving around security personnel instead of athletes or tourists, so I probably won't have any crazy stories about meeting famous people on my buses. I've heard they have tons of free events out in Whistler and in Vancouver. I'll try to make the most of this little vacation.

Also, if you want more specific stuff about what we've been doing out here look up the dramastic blog on the side of my blog because my roomie Emily is way more regular about writing on her blog. So you can hear all about everything instead of just the little tidbits I remember at the moment.

I'm off to see the Wizard-

Or just off to see Vancouver. I'll be leaving Missouri Wednesday, aka my birthday, to fly to SLC Utah. Then I'll be driving a bus to Vancouver. I don't know my exact plans, but that's the general outline. I'm turning off my phone from Jan 15 to Mar 3. I'm parking my car at my brother's house, since my parents have more snow than is healthy for my little 2000 Saturn.

Today was a grand day. I gave my farewell talk about our Heavenly Father and His love for us. I cried a lot. Seems to be the current trend and will be for the rest of my life. Some things never change.

After church we ate lasagna at my parents house. My brother Neal and his family and Cookie and her family came over. Her husband Jim couldn't make it because he had to work. He fixes heating and air condition units, so he's been working a lot lately. We played Risk after eating lasagne and delicious chocolate cake made by Emily.

Tomorrow will be the first day my parents and brother have been back to school since the start of Christmas vacation. We had loads of snow and cold out here, so school was canceled and our entire driveway is currently covered by a 6 inch block of ice. We also shoveled the entire driveway at least twice this week after snow to keep the driveway block from getting any thicker. One byproduct of this driveway water stash was a sleepover Friday night.

A couple weeks ago I posted a poll blog called 18 vs. 25. I gladly received numerous comments on this blog and kept those comments in my heart. The boy I referenced in that post exists as the man child Dallin. He happens to be 19...and a half, as he often reminds me.

We've been talking on the phone, Facebook emailing and spending quality time together. He usually comes to my house, since he is wonderful and because I feel like a weirdo going over to his house. It may have something to do with his age. And when I went over to his house, his mother asked me how old I was these days and what I was doing with my life. I felt like a fogey. And, let's be honest, I'm a lazy old lady. So Dallin comes over to play games, watch movies, go sledding.

Thursday we went sledding and he kept pushing me into the snow. Every time we walked up the hill he would push me down. After significant contact with the snow, my gloves froze over and I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't want to go inside, but my hands were frozen. So I said my hands were frozen. Sweet Baby 18, SB, made me switch gloves with him. Very dashing of him, since his hands were then freezing cold. He put on my gloves, but promptly removed them since his hands were colder with my gloves on than off.

Besides pushing me into the snow every time we trekked uphill, Dallin also rode the sled downhill with me. Turns out you can fit two almost grown ups on a longish cheap plastic sled with minimal discomfort. In case you were wondering. I kept thinking he was going to kiss me because he would sidle up to me, but he's a baby, so why would that be my expectation?

After sledding we watched three movies in a row and played some games. The man child is good at winning. I'm not accomplished in this thing, so I have not taught him much with my considerable wisdom.

Friday he took me on a date. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday. I got a burrito supreme and enjoyed it immensely. He got orange chicken and threatened to flick a chunk of it on me. I think if he had I might have tackled him in the restaurant. The world will never know what would've happened, because I snatched up that chicken chunk and tossed it onto the napkin under our table. We also ate some Cheesecake. What a nice way to celebrate a birthday.

After dinner we headed off to my home where we played cards until midnight. While turning around in our driveway, SB got stuck and after 30 minutes of pushing. I steered, he pushed, the car had moved one foot and nothing else had happened. Him pushing, that was kind of hot.

He called his parents to let them know what had happened and then..I found him a toothbrush and some sweatpants. Then we sat in the living room reading our scriptures, my dad grunted and pointed to his watch, and I went up to bed.

The next day we watched another movie, because I'm a movie-a-holic and they're such an easy activity to plan, and my dad reprimanded me for sitting with my feet in SW's lap. He said something about keeping both my feet on the ground. AWKWARD. Oops. I guess I never realized how inappropriate that is. I mean, have you seen my legs and feet? They're definitely on the sexy list. Here's a picture of them when I fell out the back of that FedEx truck and was all banged up from all the unloading I was doing.

My brother in law saw this happenstance and also made a comment about it to my sister. If I had known about the scandal I would cause with my seductive actions I would never have dreamed to pull in an innocent baby right before my mission. We weren't kissing on the couch my friends, my feet were in his lap. Whelp, now I guess I have something to look forward to when I get married. And not before.

The kissing, the kissing is good. The boy is adorable. He will be missed while I'm in Vancouver. Although he loves torturing me, we have good times. He's as good a hand holder as can be gotten. He tells me how nice I look, how great I am, that he's mad at me for leaving. These are all good things to hear.

Mailing information to access in three months-

I'm going on an 18 month mission for my church, The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'll be leaving March 24 to the Guatemala
Guatemala City North mission speaking Spanish. Before I leave for the
Provo MTC, where I'll be for 3 weeks until I head to the Guatemala MTC
for 6 weeks, I'll be driving a bus for the Olympics in Vancouver
Canada.

I'll be driving there from Jan 14 until March 4. Then
I'll tie up loose ends in Missouri until I leave for the MTC. For
anyone who wishes to write me on my mission, I would love to receive
your letters and keep in contact with all of you.

The address at the Provo MTC is:

Sister Merilee Enid Peterson
Guatemala Guatemala City North Mission
Provo Missionary Training Center
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604

The address for the Guatemala MTC is:

Guatemala MTC
Bulevar Vista Hermosa 23-71
Vista Hermosa 1, Zona 15
01015 Guatemala
Guatemala

Pouch letter address:

Sister Merilee Enid Peterson
Guatemala Guatemala City North Mission
POB 30150
Salt LAke City UT 84130-0150
USA

To
prevent possible fines please only send: postcards and letters that are
single sheet, folded into three-panesls, and taped at the top only (no
envelopes) may be sent throug thte pouch. No packages through pouch.

Packages may be sent to the mission office:

Sister Merilee Enid Peterson
Guatemala Guatemala City North Mission
5a Avenida 5-55, Edificio Euro Plaza
14 avo. Nivel, Oficina 1504, Zona 14
Guatemala
Guatemala
Phone: 502-2385-3386
(phone for package sent with private courier)

My mission email: merilee.peterson@myldsmail.net


So
that's the main informational stuff for mail. I don't actually leave
for another couple months obviously, but I'll be trying to compile
email lists etc so if you would like to receive my weekly missionary
update emails, reply to this email. Otherwise, I'll totally understand.
I also have a blog. I update it regularly now, but hopefully I can get
someone in my family to update it with my missionary emails after I
leave.

I'm not sure what the email rules are for my mission.
Rules differ for different places. I know some missions allow
missionaries to send and receive emails from friends and family, others
only allow email correspondence with family. Letters can be received
from anyone however and I've thus far been pretty good about writing
people in my life.

That's the general news I've got for now.
Wow, exciting news! Let me know how you're doing and I'll hopefully
hear back from a couple of you before I leave in three months. I know,
it's not that soon. I'm so excited for this opportunity to share the
Gospel of Jesus Christ with others. It's an important work and
somebody's got to do it! Might as well be me. Love you! Love, Merilee

I'm going on a mission-

I got my call and I'm going to the Guatemala Guatemala City North Mission. I'm speaking Spanish. WOWEE! I had no idea where I was going. And that's where I'm going. I immediately associated it with the Oliphant's grandparents because they went on two Guatemala missions and they had these sweet jackets from there they wore to school in elementary.

And I'm not reporting to the MTC until March 24, so I'm going to Vancouver from Jan 14 to Mar 4, then I'll be back in MO to prep for another couple weeks. That's the plan. Exciting.

I'm wearing Bonnie's jeans right now-

And they fit! Huzzah! For those of you that know Bonnie, and my hips, that's a miracle. Congratulations to me. Woot!

Christmas was awesome. I went to Houston Texas to hang out with Sarah and Greg and their baby Luke. Yay! It was loads of fun. For Christmas I got some blankets, some Cutco knives, and some BBC movies- including Pride & Prejudice. I also got a couple other sketchy movies...some nudies. Oops. I'll try not to suggest them when people come over. I am delighted about getting P&P, Jane Eyre, and BBC Emma though. Those are all treasured classics I did not previously own.

Aman, on our drive back from Houston we put on Bonnie's copy of Shania CD Up and it made me sooo happy. I totally forgot about that "Waiter, bring me water" song. The fav.

I also went to the Houston New Year's dance. That was choice. I was expecting a lot of interesting meat, but all I saw was the same old. I did see some cowboy boots, very exciting. However, weird as it sounds, it was very similar to most other LDS single's dances I've attended. You're probably not surprised. Neither was I.

In that: It started at 9 but nobody interesting came until 11, there were many two step songs you couldn't dance to alone at this desert time, the attractive boys stayed out in the hall, the weird boys asked me to dance for the last two songs when I had already picked who I wanted to dance with for those, thereby cheating me of my end of dance euphoria.

Highlights: two separate girls asked me where I had learned how to dance. I said "Church dances". Bonnie found some boy news. Lauren and Liz, darling twins, befriended me at the dance and then I had friends to dance with for the rest of it. I was wearing a golden peacock feather adorned shirt and powder so I looked pretty fly, for a white guy. I talked to Sweet Baby 18 on the phone to say Happy New Year and he again surprised and astonished me by saying terribly nice things to me. How does a 19 yr old boy get so skilled at girl niceties? It boggles my mind. I do like him.

I am wearing a scarf on my head. Along with the jeans, some curlers were left at our house by Bonster. So I put them in my hair, but the pins wouldn't hold on the bottom layer of my hair. Thereby necessitating some scarf wear until the curler heat left my hair gorgeously quaffed.

Much snow sits here in Missouri. I am astonished. No, disappointed. The cold begins to surround our house as the thermostat has broken. I need to missionary write some people so they'll write me on my mission. No news yet.