continuum

The countdown officially begins! Our time spent in Vasylkiv officially outweighs our total time left here. Anyway, so, that is really unimportant because it hardly outweighs anything else. On to more important thoughts!

This past summer I used to teach my campers about the important of Shabbat (a la AJ Heschel) concerning the idea of "space." We, as humans, according to Heschel, love space, want space, conquer space, find space to fill, make space spacious (does that even work?)... And then on the Sabbath we are commanded to take a step back and say "I am now conquering time." We devote these 25 hours to the time we have with ourselves, our friends, our family - we learn to leave space and embrace other parts of our existence. Amazing fantastic book with a lot more to say, and has truly made me love Shabbat more than I could ever say in words.

Well, I would love to go back in time and have a discussion with Heschel about space because being in Ukraine makes me think about this idea even more. The obsession I have (as an American) with space is quite obviously depicted in the room Тамара has given me - my clothes are sprawled everywhere, along with papers and notes and books and chargers. Back home, during the holidays, my mom and I complained about our lack of counter space for cooking, and yet, Тамара manages to cook three course meals with a kitchen that has the square footage of a standard dining room tabletop. What is our need for space? Would Ukrainians have more if there was more space to put more in? Do we have enough? My thoughts on time are so mixed up in my head that I think leaving them out of this already messy web would be better for both you and me.

I am almost done with my teacher training portion of the "semester" and then I will be focusing my energies on my individual project (a cookbook), a community project with my group-mates and learning Russian. We are running a teaching seminar where we are presenting a handbook of games and role plays that we wrote ourselves for the English teachers in our community. Should make for an exciting and beneficial contribution.

The weather has been incredibly moody lately, but I am hearing snowstorms are ahead and that the warm weather that has been forcing me out of sweaters is saying goodbye. Goodbye flip-flops!