"Hello, Bonjour"

The official languages of the Olympics are French and English. Often I will hear people say these two words for greeting and since I know both languages I usually respond to the word I hear last, “Bonjour!” But there are only a dozen maybe who can go any farther than that, and with these dozen I have a jolly splendid time using the French side of my tongue. ☺ It’s the best.

There isn’t a whole lot to do except eat, work and sleep up here. We went into town today and I’ll get to that in a later post. But they provide three meals daily and the options are quite varied. On top of that, the food is actually quite good! Cereal is always available (aaand, I seem to be eating it at every meal…) and desserts are served with dinner. Recently there has been a lot of blueberry-inspired dessert options. Methinks they have a great big glob they want to use before it goes bad. My roommate hypothesized that they must have had a large blueberry donation. These are times when I just pat her hand and nod. And laugh, haha! Cuz she’s so funny. Blueberry donations… There is a road here that intersects the freeway called Blueberry Dr. and that made me happy and continues to do so each time I pass it, which is about a double dozen times a day when they put me on twelve hour shifts every other day.

We have nine buses and eighteen drivers staying here in Whistler. So, now when there isn’t as much to have driven around we basically have day on/day off schedules. One driver works twelve hours instead of two working six hours…don’t know why really. A LOT could go a lot better around here, if people communicated and made final decisions. There are just so many people and things to keep track of. I’m so glad I’m not in any leadership position of any kind. Bless their hearts…

Sunday was a day off for me and a bunch of the other Mormons. We decided to jump on the bus headed to Vancouver and go to church. Back when we were housed in Vancouver I had looked up where local churches were and there was an address listed not far from where we were staying. We ended up going to a different ward the first Sunday, but this Sunday I was desirous not to have to travel the eight miles/forty minutes out of town. First thing I had to do though in Vancouver was go to the UDAC (don’t worry about what that is) to get my “accreditation.” I don’t even know its purpose but I wear it around my neck and it makes a lot of things become free and closed doors magically open. It’s sweet. So, I got that first, which only took about five minutes. During those five minutes, Vic was having one of the UDAC employees look up the address of the church since I couldn’t remember the exact location, only that it wasn’t far from the hotel. She looked it up and the internet showed that at that location the ward was Spanish. I thought to myself, “huh.” And took the sticky note she had written the address on and returned to the mini bus filled with drivers. We were headed back to the hotel anyway and I would double check the address because I know that I saw a regular ward meeting at that address. It was true when I looked again, it said 1st Ward Spanish (1:00) and 4th Ward (1:00).
It was already 1:00 when we rushed for the city bus so we weren’t so concerned with being on time, but we did want to get there asap so we walked briskly. I had little black flats on and it wasn’t ideal. We did catch one bus. It took us maybe 1.9 of the 2.7 miles we had to cover and where it dropped us off we walked some more. It was cold and slightly rainy, too. Uphill both ways… jk. Well, after passing a Jewish center, a Methodist chapel and some other building with fancy letters that looked possibly religious, we saw a simple steeple on a brown brick building and we knew it was the one. Well, technically it was the right church, the right religion, but we all heaved a sigh when we saw the letters on the outside: La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días. Wrong language. Apparently the Internet failed to mention that actually the 4th Ward met at 9AM.

We sat around for a while, soaking in some spiritualness, talking to our nonmember friend that had trekked with us…yeah, that too, and then left to wait for the next bus to take us back to the hotel. My feet hurt by the end, but it was a fine adventure. This friend is still asking a lot of questions and I gave him my little copy of those give away paperback types of Book of Mormon. I guess he’s already started reading it and getting bugged by the “And it came to pass”es, so he’s doing just fine… ;) Anyway, it’s a good book.

Pretty much now I should be done. This is long enough. I have written a poem that I may post next time I’m around the Web. I’ll just say it’s been a hard one to get out. My creativity is constipated. Too much serious work digestion. A la prochaine!