The Gym

There is a gym right outside the South Gate of the school. It is not much of facility. There are a couple of running treadmills, two non-electric bikes, a few weight machines and free weights, and even a couple of those hip belt machines which I haven’t seen in decades, where you strap a belt around your hip and the machine moves the belt around. I have no idea what that vibrating, oscillating belt is supposed to do, and neither do the people who use it, I think. And I probably would not have joined, even if it only costs about eight dollars a month, were it not for the wooden floor that takes up about half of the area. There is nothing special about the wooden floor itself. It is the fact that every night (and weekend afternoons) some group class or other is held on the wood floor. Most nights of the week it is some version of aerobics. I joined because they do a type of yoga a couple of nights a week and because it is nice to have somewhere else to go.

My site mate, Spencer, goes a couple of nights as well, though he primarily goes for the aerobics, when the floor fills with forty Chinese girl and one Peace Corps volunteer. I go on Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon, which is when they do yoga. It is not the greatest yoga, and of course I don’t understand a word of being said, but both sessions offer a pretty good stretching workout, with the Wednesday class being a little closer to traditional yoga. At those times it is about twenty Chinese girls and one Peace Corps volunteer. On Thursday nights we go together, or at least we did tonight and it may start a tradition, who knows. I stuck to the treadmill and watched the aerobics class. It actually would have been a pretty good aerobic workout, probably even more of one than I got on the treadmill, and I certainly saw Spencer sweating.

Loud techno music, bright lights and a wall of mirrors–some things are the same all over the world I think, and an aerobics class may be one of them.