Peltzer Weekly News - Season One - Episode Five

Dear Everyone We Love,

This week we had a lot of fun, as usual. We are still alive, still living in Brooklyn in our apartment called "The Relaxing Getaway on Prospect Park". We got Monday off because of presidents day, so we planned to go to Staten Island because we had a gift card for the Perkins Restaurant from Serena's parents. There is no Perkins in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx...it is only on Staten Island. We planned an entire day trip to go just to that restaurant. We rode a bus, then the subway, then the ferry, then a train....then some walking and we arrived at our destination! On our way, we were able to see the statue of the "Wall Street Bull", which is a symbol of the New York Financial District (abbreviated here as the Fi Di). We also passed by the Statue of Liberty. It was our closest view of her so far. She even winked at us as we passed by her...it was great. Once we arrived in Staten Island we both agreed that it didn't feel like we were in New York anymore. In fact, it didn't feel like we were in a big city anymore at all. It felt more like we were in Orem, Utah...maybe even Ogden, Utah....it was strange! The restaurant is located in an area of Staten Island called "Old Town" and maybe it is called Old Town because you have to be a certain age to live there? We didn't really see very many people our age there. Round trip, it took up our entire day, but it was a fun ride full of things to see with a variety of transportation.

This week, Mat had exams in his classes. We didn't go out to play during the week and we were up pretty late on some nights studying and working. Friday we met up in the afternoon after work and studying at the Manhattan Temple. We made an interesting friend there who said that since we weren't from Manhattan, that we were living in the countryside in Brooklyn. We laughed at him...these city people don't know what "The Countryside" really means.

After the temple we had our date night. We went out to a mexican restaurant similar to Cafe Rio and it was great. It was on the opposite side of Central Park from the Temple. We enjoyed strolling through the park at dark, with the city sky scrapers covered in fog, mixed with the rain and the lights. We passed through 5th ave and some fancy apartment buildings. It was fun to see the city in the rainy darkness.

Saturday was our biggest adventure...we watched a few youtube videos about how to cut a mans hair and felt like that was sufficient preparation for Mat to have his own hair cut by none other than Serena. He had great faith and trust in her even though she warned him many many times that he may come out of this looking scary enough to not want to go out into public for at least a month. But it didn't turn out too bad? At least that is what Mat says. We'll see what your opinion is, we've included some pictures.

We would like to congratulate Serena's brother Stuart's girlfriend Danielle. She was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Saturday and confirmed a member today. We are excited for her and happy to welcome her as a new member of the church.

We would also like to wish our sister-in-law Marie-Christine Peltzer a very happy birthday this Monday. We hope you know how much you are loved and that you have a very happy day.

We hope you are doing well and are enjoying the weekly updates...at least we hope you enjoy getting them...:)

With love,

The Peltzers

Peltzer Weekly News - Season One - Episode Four

Dear Everyone we love,

We hope you didn't cry too much for having to wait an extra day to get our update. :) We know we missed you all and often think of you and how fun it would be to have each of you here in New York with us.

This week was full of adventure and fun...we were able to see so much of the city and the people in it. One of our favorite things is having the metro that takes us anywhere we want to go. There are many things we are able to do and see because of it...but every once in a while we also get the added pleasure of seeing the "unique" individuals of the city in the metro. Some are homeless and asking for help in very unique ways (playing instruments, break dancing, Michael Jackson dancing, singing, or they just stare at you and tell you that you must be saved), some are just commuting, going to their next stop and they smile and say hi and tell you directions to the greatest places in New York. We noticed that the people here, in general, are very nice. At first glance they may look very closed-off, but if you smile at them...it's like you are the sun warming their entire life up. They are polite to you. We also noticed they all dress the same....mostly in black, the girls with boots and down feather coats and the boys in orange/tan leather construction worker shoes with suits on and beanies for their hats. It's funny how in such a big city...everybody tries to look the same. They call themselves the best dressed people in the States...but we laugh and don't think that is true. We also enjoy seeing the famous people of the world in this city. Mat enjoyed seeing the Giants football team, who had just won the super bowl, and were parading around the streets by his school. Sorry, Eddie (Poe's husband), that the patriots lost.

For valentines day, we planned a big adventure to see all the sites. We were going to do so many things, like see a movie outside in the park and go to the top of the Rockefeller center to see the city at night. But the movie in the park was the night before and the "Top of the Rock" is apparently an overpriced and expensive way to see the city when you can go to other places for free. So we ditched those ideas and went to Italy for our valentines dinner. Really....we did! It was at an Italian restaurant in "Little Italy"...just across from "China Town". Totally makes sense, right? Ha ha, not really. But when you enter those cities...it's like you are really in that country.

The waiters at the restaurant didn't sing for us, but they did have heart shaped balloons at each table, gave us a complimentary dessert on the house and a heart shaped box of chocolates. We felt very fancy there...at a place where we thought it was just a regular priced Italian restaurant. But the workers made it a very special occasion for us.After dinner, we went on the Metro, with a fancy bouquet of roses from Mat, and rode it to Grand Central Terminal. It took our breath away!!!!! We watched the movie "Arthur" before going and liked learning what we did about it from the movie...but nothing could prepare a person for how breathtaking it is to see it with their own eyes. It's big, beautiful and so FULL....there are so many things there and SO many people. We enjoyed just staring at the ceiling and the walls. We plan to return for a "Date Night" as it provides good entertainment and offers many unique things, like a whisper wall!

Our next stop was Times Square, where we enjoyed seeing what we thought would be an AMAZING, COMPLETELY AWESOME computerized heart beating inside of glass pillars, but it turned out to be just a computerized heart beating inside of glass pillars and it wasn't very amazing or completely awesome...although still fun to see.

We also saw the building for "The New York Times". We feel like we are so fancy here.

On the way home, we waved hello to the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings.

We hope you all had a wonderful valentines day and felt the love of those in your life. We also hope you enjoyed some good heart shaped foods...maybe that will be a tradition for us. We had heart shaped brownies, eggs in heart shaped toast, and heart shaped strawberry cake. It was fun!

We went to the temple again this Thursday. Thursday is the perfect day for us to have as "our temple night". We get on the metro, walked passed a metal globe, passed the Juilliard school...and TA DA...there is the Temple. It feels like going on an adventure ride and the final destination (the temple) is our cozy, familiar, and welcoming home filled with peace and blessings. It's so wonderful to be able to have a temple nearby and be able to go each week. We promise we are working on getting a picture of it.

Saturday, Mat stayed home and worked on his assignments. Serena went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. It's a block away from our apartment and is free for now during the winter. It has many many greenhouses, one for each different type of climate: tropical, warm weather, dessert, etc. They also had a pond garden and a garden for Bonsai trees. Around the Gardens, there is a cherry tree pathway which will bloom sometime around the end of April or beginning of may. They also have a rose garden, natural forest, herb garden, Shakespearean Garden, Scented Garden, Rock Garden, and many more things. It is beautiful now during the winter, even though many of it is not in bloom. We look forward to going there together, especially when the gardens are in full bloom.

Sunday, Serena was set apart in her calling as a primary teacher. She went for the first time and was a little scared to find out how crazy of a world primary can be, but looks forward to preparing her first lesson and hopes it will go well. We are still waiting for Mat to get his calling...he did get his home teaching assignment and it is for the same girl that Serena is a visiting teacher for. Her name is Alejandra and she is an exchange student from Columbia living in New York for one year with a Jewish Family. She seems very lonely and wants more friends and we look forward to bringing her along with us on our upcoming adventures. She will be our new big teenager "daughter" that we can adopt.

After church, we thought it would be romantic to go for a walk on the beach on Coney Island. We got there and walked around on the board walk, sat and enjoyed the cold wind, seagulls, and the fake statues of palm trees in the sand. It was funny. Coney island is known for being an amusement park area and it is true. Although not used for those purposes in the winter, it looks like it would be a fun place in the summertime. Mat was very VERY excited to see that they have an annual hot dog eating competition there, and couldn't stop talking about how exciting that would be to win that contest. The winner last year ate 68 hot dogs. We don't know if they win more than a metal for all of their hard work, but Mat was very disappointed to find out the competition is in July and we won't be here for it. Maybe he will secretly fly out here to compete...we will see I guess.

Stay tuned for next weeks edition where we will tell you about our adventures past the Lady Liberty to Staten Island. Know that we love you and that we are doing well. Mat is preparing for his mid-terms this week and Serena is still working on her job. Have a great week and we hope to hear from you soon (or see you, that would be even better).

Love,

The Peltzers

Peltzer Weekly News - Season One - Episode Three

Bonjour,

Our adventures in New York continue! This week has been one of our funnest in New York City. The temple has been closed for cleaning and reopened this week. It was our first opportunity to go to the Manhattan Temple. Despite how cold and busy this city is, it was beautiful to step into the House of the Lord from right off the street and feel the warmth, the quiet and the peace of the spirit that fills that holy house. Neither of us are fluent in spanish, but after leaving the temple, we had become experts since the temple website failed to mention that the day and time we had chosen to go was a spanish session. It was still a good experience and we had a good laugh about it. It is a very small temple and we are surprised by how few people are inside compared to how large the city is.

Mat has school from Monday - Thursday, with a half day on thursday. Serena works from home and is there all day. So when Friday comes, we are ready to have a break and get out of the house. So Thursday night is the beginning of our weekend here. It gives us one day to play, one day to get things done, do homework assignments and grocery shop, and one day to keep the sabbath day holy. Friday is typically our fun day where we like to get out of the house and discover the sites of the city and have our date night. We take turns planning our date nights (which are turning into date days) and it was Serena's goal this week to do the most fun for the least amount of money. We took the subway to the brooklyn bridge and walked across the whole bridge. It gave a beautiful view of the river, Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Statue of Liberty. We asked a Japanese couple to take our picture and then offered to take a picture of them. The wife smiled and said, "Thank you so much" then put her arm around Serena and said she was ready for the picture. She wanted a picture of Serena and her. We were confused but thought it was super hilarious. It was probably the first time she saw a white girl with blonde hair in the entire city...because for some reason all the white girls here have brown hair.

We continued our walk to the City Hall courtyard where there were many beautiful old buildings and we learned more about the history of New York. We walked to Saint John's University where Mat goes to school which is right across the street from Goldman Sachs headquarters and took some pictures. We finished our walk by going to China....town :) It is obvious when you arrive in Chinatown...there are no other races there except for A LOT of Chinese people with a few out of place white people with cameras and goofy smiles and one Tahitian guy. We wondered around the shops and saw many Seafood markets, fruit markets and lots of people selling clothes, ginseng, jewelry, cell phone plans and more all from the same small building.

We had a delicious dinner at a place called Sweet Spring Restaurant. We saw many good reviews of it online, even though from the looks of it you wouldn't think it's anything special and would probably have picked the nicer looking building across the street to dine at. But we knew there was only one thing we wanted and that was our Pork Dumplings!!!! (some of you may call them pot stickers). You get 5 for $1.25. Pretty much everything on the menu is less then $4.00 and we were so happy to find so much food for so cheap. But cheap wasn't the best part...the food is amazing and we got some dumplings to go so we could eat them the next day. We were in heaven.

It's hard to find a public bathroom in Chinatown...even in downtown Manhattan. We saw a lady police officer and asked where we might find one...and she told us to go to the police station, or the precinct as they call it. We spent part of our date night in the police station watching a man with handcuffs on his wrists and feet be escorted into the building. Our new best friend police officer told us it was one of the oldest precinct stations in New York city and showed us different parts of the building. Cops are so nice when you have to go potty :) (Quand tu dois aller au petit coin) he he he.

We will keep a list of all of our favorite places in case any of you decide to come visit us and we will take you there! :) hint hint hint

Saturday we worked hard on assignments, but we took some time to enjoy a walk in our beautiful park.

Sunday, today, we enjoyed getting to know the members of our ward. Serena got a calling to be a primary teacher for the CTR class (5 to 7 year olds). We think Mat is going to get called as a French sunday school teacher as we have many members in the ward from Haiti who speak French and Creole and are new to the church. Today was a cold day so we stayed inside after church and made some delicious heart shaped brownies to stay warm with...in preparation for the Lovers Holiday coming up this week. We hope you all have a happy valentines week and know that you are loved, remembered, and we pray for you all often. Thank you Mom and Dad Danielson for the shipment of our kitchen utensils this week and some valentines surprises inside as well. We love having our pots, pans and knives again. Thank you Mom Van Bastolear for letting us wake you up at 5am on a saturday morning to talk to us for many hours. We are fully aware of our time differences with all of you but we will still keep in touch anyway! :)

Love you all,

Serena and Mat Peltzer

p.s. we decided to name our first set of Twins Brooklyn and Bronx....if the day comes that we happen to have a set of twins that also happens to be one boy and one girl :) just kidding...maybe!

Peltzer Weekly News - Season One - Episode Two

Dear Family and Friends,

Our adventures in Brooklyn are continuing and we are enjoying new sights, smells and sounds of the city. Our belongings arrived in the mail on monday (thank you Danielson Parentals). It's an exciting feeling to be able to move in and feel settled, but those feelings were delayed by a cat. The owner of the apartment did not leave her cat behind, but the cat left it's fur behind...massive amounts of it. Obscene amounts of it. Enough to stuff a pillow with. Our week was spent cleaning and sanitizing....and finally unpacking.

Prospect Park is the view we have from our window. It's beautiful and is listed as one of the most famous parks in the world. We went running there this weekend. Although the park is not green and blooming right now as shown in the pictures, we were still amazed by how beautiful the park is and how many things there are to do in the park. Unfortunately, despite how inspiring the park is, it did not help the old lady in this relationship have an inspiring run like her youthful husband was able to have. We will work on that and teach the charlie horses not to come along on our runs :)

Friday night is the date night in our relationship and we love to spend it discovering the food and the cites of the "Big Apple". We went to Times Square and were amazed by how small it was in comparison to how big it looks in movies and pictures. We saw the glowing advertisements on the sides of all of the buildings and the big "Ball" that is dropped to bring in the new year. Our camera was left at home that night, so there are no pictures to show the delectable food we had at the Chinese buffet we went to.

It was a busy week with work and school, but we had a lot of fun outside of those things. Tune in next week to hear about our adventures to the New York Temple, the fancy homeless people we will befriend at the library and so on.

We love you all and appreciate the support and the love you each have for us. We are grateful to each of you for the dear people you are to us, as family and friends. We wish you all a wonderful week and apologize for not having wished you a happy groundhogs day earlier, I'm sure you were all disappointed.

Love,

Serena and Mat Peltzer