The PE teacher (Sammy) asked me if I wanted to go to yoga with her sometime. Apparently, her sister is the owner of a new yoga shop in Ilsan. Being the adventurous person I am and having not done yoga for a really long time, I decided to try it. After reviewing the yoga schedule, we decided a gentle yoga would be the easiest one to begin with since both of us hadn’t practiced yoga in quite some time. Sammy picked me & my pomegranate (it’s customary to give small gifts to people when they do something nice for you) up at 8:45 and we headed to our 9:30 yoga class - Koreans do everything late at night it seems.
I walked in and was immediately assaulted by the incense, a pleasant flowery scent that was almost like lavender. Initially it was a little overwhelming but it soon died down and was soon no more then a light whisp on the nose. We walked into a heated room and sat on the provided mats, awaiting our yoga instructor.
After doing some preemptive stretching, the yoga instructor walked in and smiled at the foreigner (me!). She then proceeded to take us through a hours worth of difficult stretches and poses that required her to constantly move me into different positions. This was due to a mixture of not understanding her when she spoke Korean to the rest of the class and having horrible posture.
One position was almost like a push up - this is where the yoga instructor spent roughly 3-4 minutes trying to “fix” my disjointed elbow. I guess she realized that it wasn't my fault that my arm bent like that and it was more uncomfortable to try to straighten it out because she eventually gave up.
After yoga class, I sat and had a cup of corn tea with Sammy and her sister (Rha-la, I believe). We discussed going on one Saturday night to have dinner and drinks. So I guess that's what I'm doing one of these weekends as Koreans will hold you to your agreements!
The day after yoga, Jacob and I joined a Korean gym. This gym is literally across the street. They offer an interesting service as well. For an additional 10 dollars a month, you can borrow gym clothes to wear while you work out. So you don't have to bring your own clothes. This makes sense because Korea is such a mobile society. Everything is available at all hours of the day/night. Also, washing and drying your clothes is a bit of a pain due to the fact that dryers are almost nonexistent.
Another odd thing, as with most Korean places, you have to take your shoes off when you enter the gym then change into your gym shoes. You wear slippers from the doorway to the locker room. Odd, I thought.
Great thing about the gym? There are tellys on the treadmills. Tellys with English channels. So whenever I wanna watch telly, all I have to do is hop on a treadmill! Small price to pay ^_^
While at the gym, Jacob kept asking me what I wanted to accomplish by going to the gym. I didn't know yesterday but today I thought of it. I want to run a race in Korea and get a decent time. I've never run a real race before as I'm not a real competitive person and enjoy running just for running, not for racing. But I've wanted to run a real race for a while now and what better place to do it than in Korea?
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