From Holland to Holland: Work It

Have I mentioned before that I joined a gym here? I started out at a gym back in October, and it's actually the first gym membership I've ever had. Back in the U.S. I would run outside or on our treadmill, and then there was a stint where I got into P90X. But with my extra time here in my daily life, I figured going to the gym would be a fun activity. Plus I've always wanted to try some work-out classes because they seemed like a good time.

Over the months I've been doing my own thing there as well as going to a class called BodyShape. Ask me sometime how to say that with a Dutch accent. The class is lead in Dutch with all Dutch women, so I felt pretty brave going in there the first few times. I eventually got used to the class and it's really easy to follow along, even if I don't understand all the words. There are some phrases that sound very similar to English. My favorite is, "Flex de voet!", which sounds nearly identical to "Flex your foot!" said really quickly.

Well, today I tried out a new class called Total Body Workout. I figured it would be easy enough to just follow along like my other class. But, boy, I was wrong. For the first 10 minutes I'm sure I looked like a complete idiot. The instructor was yelling out commands and twisting and twirling and I just couldn't get it. It was one of those moments that happen more often in expat life than in normal life where I just had to be OK with looking silly and not fitting in. My gut reaction was to tell the people around me that the reason I was sucking so bad was that I didn't understand any of the instructions, but I didn't do that. Instead I stuck it out, and it actually got less complicated as we went on, so I ended up being OK. I may even go back next week. Maybe practice a few of the moves beforehand.

Anywho, hopefully you can all laugh picturing me romping around. And just for fun since I don't have any other photos for the post, here's some of my gym I snagged from their website: