Zapraszamy.

Currently, I'm in the library of the Hotel Oscar Panoramic in a small town called Mragowa in a region of Poland called Mazury. It's the Polish equivalent of the Poconos. Imagine lakes and forests and quaint hamlets. Voila -- Mazury!

Aydan and I will be here until Wednesday for the Democratic Union of Women's summer conference. Workshops all day and beer all night. Actually, after the first day, we were excused from the workshops because they're all in Polish. Some women were translating them to English for us, but it was still difficult to follow along and it was distracting to everybody else. However, the "beer all night" part is semi-true. Tonight we went for drinks with all of our coworkers. It was a bonding experience. Women here love their half-liters of Zywiec.

So since we're excused from the workshops, and we're kind of stuck at this resort, we've just been lounging around our lovely hotel room, eating at the endless buffett, and watching Polish cable. It sounds like it could get boring, but I feel like I'm very purposefully on vacation. I also feel like it's one of the few times I've been in a hotel room for a wholesome reason. I think in my life, hotels have always been associated with nefarious activity.

At the beginning, I decided to view this conference as a retreat. It's not quite a silent retreat, but it is five days without any native English-speakers. I've been writing and reading and laying on the docks by the lake. And the weather is brisk and windy, more like late-March weather than middle-of-July weather. I'm feeling very zen. I think, for the first time in a long time, I've stopped feeling like I'm on the verge of being late for something. Does that make sense?

And now, it's off to sleep in my very clean and very soft Hotel Oscar Panoramic bed.