Russian Food

Mood: stuffed
What I'm Reading: Meditations (originally ''To Himself'') by Marcus Aurelius; P.S-I don't really have so much free time that I can always read, but I am on the train A LOT and it is hard for me to write there, so I read :) I won't complain.

Yesterday I was invited to dinner at a classmate's home. I ended up staying more than four hours as we talked religion, culture, and family. She and her husband made a huge amount of Russian food and sent me home with a lot of it. I think that I literally have enough to fill my larder for the next 3 days. We had Blinchiki and Pyrogi along with potato salad and chocolate covered banannas for dessert.

''Accustom yourself to give careful attention to what others are saying, and try your best to enter into the mind of the speaker'' -Aurelius

''Neither want of power nor want of skill could have led Nature into the error of allowing good and evil to be visited indiscriminately on the virtuous and the sinful alike. Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; therefore the are no more good than they are evil.'' -Aurelius (I'm still trying to understand the substance of Aurelius' world view. I don't think I agree with his thought here, but I enjoying tossing it around none the less.)

Addendum: I've decided why I don't like Aurelius's thought here (apart from his denial of God). Rather than explain evil, he seems to deny that it exists. This is foolish. Even children have an intuitive understanding that evil and its consequences are a tangible reality. With time we are able to add to this instinctive understanding solid logical reasons to believe that some circumstances are good and some are evil and that these are not distributed according to the personal merits of people. I feel as though he has side stepped a fundamental question.