Today at lunch I went with my coworker Manoela to her gym. Gyms aren’t advertised here as much and have small store fronts, so I would’ve missed the gym if Manoela hadn’t pointed it out. It’s much larger than you would expect (although still not that big) and reminded me of the older gym I went to in New York.

I decided to take the “Abdos-Fessiers” class (abs and glutes). The room and class was rather small; maybe about a dozen people, half of which were men. Luckily, there’s not much advanced vocabulary used in work-out classes, so the French words were, for the most part, ones that I learned from my “Learn French in Your Car": “allons-y” (let’s go), “encore” (again), “a droit” (right), “a gauche” (left) and lots of counting down from huit (eight).

I feared that the instructor would come over and help me and I wouldn’t understand him, so I watched my neighbors very carefully and tried to imitate as best I could. Despite my best efforts, the instructor did try to tell me to correct my pose once near the end of class. I could figure out what he was saying with the gestures, but then he said something and smiled and laughed and I just smiled and laughed, too (I’ve been doing that a lot here).

A big difference I noticed is that the women were dressed much more modestly; maybe it’s because my gym at home is a little yuppie, but it seems like modest dressing in general is more the norm. The class also didn’t seem that advanced; it was a lot of doing crunches over and over. Not advanced doesn’t mean not hard though; I’m going to be lucky to walk up my hundred stairs tonight! The biggest difference (in my opinion, since I am, after all, a lawyer) was that I didn't have to give any information or sign a release--Manoela just said she had a guest and they waived me in.