chez moi.

Either due to the granola habits I picked up in Moab, or the vagrant habits I picked up while traveling, some of you seem to be worried about where I am living. NO NEED. First of all, my roommates are studs.

Meet Clément:
(hey man, if you take pictures of yourself with my camera, you're just begging me to post them online)

He is a graphic designer for a record label and is also Gab's brother. (Gab was my studly French roommate at BYU for three semesters. Remember, the one that plays soccer and got addicted to ballroom dance? The one all the girls had crushes on, remember?) Well Gab was an awesome roommate, but Clément's even better because he has a girlfriend and thereby doesn't steal all my prospects. (Gab, je plaisante. Tu sais que je te kiffe GRAV.)

Meet Christophe:
This is his headshot I stole off of facebook--j'espère que ça te derange pas trop, Christophe. C'est juste que t'es tellement beau...

He is an actor and is Laetitia's brother. Laetitia and I met at BYU last summer and quickly became good friends. Christophe is an awesome roommate because he is kind of the reason I ended up in Paris. You see last May, Gab and Laetitia were telling me about how Laetitia's brother, Christophe, was going to this acting school in Paris that he really liked... and the rest is history. Well, actually the rest is the present. You follow me?

The apartment is great. It's cozy, like most Parisian apartments, but it's nice. Two rooms, separated bathroom and toilet, and a kitchen. All you need, including a WASHER.

Here's me making pancakes in the kitchen. FYI, if you want to really impress French people, make pancakes:
We live in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, which can be a little shady, but our neighborhood is nice, as you can see by this view from our window:
It's right next to a métro stop and a bus route that goes right to my school. And we live by the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery which is home to the graves of Chopin, Molière, Balzac, Proust, Jim Morrison, Edith Pilaf, and this person's:
First person, who hasn't been to Paris, that can name who resides under this strange statue wins a free French pastry of your choice. Redeemable only in Paris.


Oh, and here's a picture of that rally I went to on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:
Look familiar? I may have failed to mention that it was not in Paris.
It was here:
More to come on that subject.

and the wall came tumbling down.

Twenty years ago today, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) announced that its citizens could travel freely into West Germany and West Berlin. That day, thousands walked around, over, and through a wall that had divided a nation for nearly thirty years. It was the beginning of the end of communism in Europe.

Today I wore my Berlin Wall t-shirt and went to a public rally, wanting to share in the celebration and wanting to acknowledge my awareness of and gratitude for the events that led up to and the events that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent fall of the Iron Curtain. Few contemporary events have had greater impact on my life than this one. That might sound strange, but it is true. Having had the blessing and pleasure of serving a mission for my church in a post-communist state that is still coping with its totalitarian past, I pray, along with billions of others, that human rights and the rule of law may someday be available to all. Prior to the events of 1989, Spencer W. Kimball urged church members worldwide to pray and prepare for the possibility to share the Restored Gospel with those behind the Iron Curtain. Recently, in a world where regimes continue to withhold religious freedom, Thomas S. Monson has recommissioned that call.

May the walls continue to fall.

la vie en rose.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then decided that I didn't feel good about taking either one--that, when I really thought about it, what I wanted was something different out of life. So I sat down where I was and scratched around in the dirt a while to sort things out, turning down an offer from Teach for America. Twice. And canceling my law school applications. Leaving to Nauvoo not knowing what I was doing with my life and coming home still not knowing. Then I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and tromped through the woods in pursuit of a road that was only dimly lit on the horizon.

At the end of this rainy Tuesday, 2 November 2009, I find myself at the end of another awesome day in Paris. And I can't believe I'm here.

I still wonder what I am doing. What was I thinking? What AM I thinking? I still believe not going to law school was the smartest dumbest thing I have ever done, but I would have loved to contribute to Teach for America--it just didn't feel right. So running away to Paris was the RIGHT thing? As ridiculous as that sounds, yes. YES.

I admit that I may be wrong. That maybe I am putting off life, chasing pipe dreams. After all, no matter how well I justify going to acting school in Paris, it is still acting school in Paris. And I can understand what it looks like from the outside looking in. Some have described it as "crazy", "spontaneous", "reckless abandon", or as one friend put it tonight over dinner, "so you're just doing this for fun now, right?"

No. I want to make a career out of acting. There. I've said it. Film and theatre. I am passionate about people's stories, and about my stories, and I love learning how to communicate those stories, and what can be learned from them, through the arts.

I am not completely naive however, and I recognize that I may need to have a more stable plan B if I am going to feed a family. Thanks to Florent, I know that I would also love to be a Professor. But first I need some training. So I am doing my best to acquire a set of skills while also getting an unique perspective, international experience, and intensive language work at the same time.

Yes, I may be wrong. I may have been fooled by my own self-indulgence and wanderlust. But things have worked out miraculously (stay tuned for more info on my ideal apartment situation and a part time job starting on Thursday), and I would be an ingrate not to attribute it to Divine Providence. Whether that means I am following God's will or He is simply saving me from my own stupidity (or a mix of both), I can't say. But at the end of this beautiful, rainy autumn day, I am moved to believe that I am just where I should be. And I love it.