My First Gym Experience

If you didn't know, I live in a city. A big city. A couple million people live here. We all live in these tall apartment buildings. My building has 15 floors. I am on the 8th floor while Beth is on the 9th floor. Our apartment complex is called Hyveras. Beth and I live in Hyveras building A. There are also buildings B, C, and D. Most of the teachers at our school live in A or B. What is really nice is that there is a gym in building D, the building across the sidewalk from our building A. One of my goals in Korea is to become healthier, both by eating healthier and being more active. Beth has a similar goal. She joined the gym about a month ago and I decided to join too. In this post I will describe what happened the first time I went to workout there...as well as other observations...

On Monday night Beth takes me to the gym to check it out. The gym is on the 9th floor of Hyveras building D. From what I saw that night there are stationary bikes, treadmills, weight machines, free weights, and lots of lockers. There is also a room for classes. There is a chart on the front table with the prices. The price chart says 3 months for 150,000 won. Beth said she got 4 months for the same price and that they should give that price to me as well for being a foreigner. I was worried she would charge me more when I said 4 months, but she didn't! So that night I got a temporary pass to use until my official card game in on Wednesday.

On Tuesday Beth had to work but I didn't yet. Thus, I decided to go to the gym during my free time. I came into the gym and gave my temporary id to the woman at the desk. She gave me two small towels and a locker key with the number 1 on it. I assumed that I would just find the locker with the number 1 on it, so I walked around until I found the number 1 locker, which was right next to the athletic trainers office where a male trainer was at his desk inside. The key didn't work. I pondered going in and asking the trainer but felt too embarrassed. I decided to keep struggling until he noticed me! He saw me and came out to help me.  He actually spoke some English and showed me that actually my locker was in the women's locker room! Whoops.

When I went into the locker room I noticed that there were piles of shoes by the door. I got the hint that I needed to take my shoes off! I found my locker and it worked, whew. I put my shoes back on and found a treadmill. The treadmill directions were in Korean though, so I just stood there for a minute. Then the male trainer from earlier came over to me and asked me if it was my first time. I told him it was and he asked if I wanted training. I said no but he still called over a female trainer and she took over. However, she could not speak English! She had me get on a scale and asked me basic questions, like age and height. I understood her questions because I could see the scale screen and could figure out what it was asking. We had trouble though when she asked for my height. I understood her question but I didn't know my height in centimeters. She didn't understand feet and inches, so she guessed my height at 170 cm. I found out later I'm actually 176 cm. Anyway, she filled in the information as I stood there on the scale and she had me hold on these grippy things that measured some kind of information from me. The trainer came back with a printout of my information and that is where the fun began...

The print out was in Korean characters except for the numbers. The only numbers I understood were my height and weight. I figured some of the numbers meant BMI or percent body fat. The poor trainer couldn't figure out how to explain it to me. She called a friend of hers on the phone who spoke English. I don't think her friend even worked at the gym! The trainer gave me the phone and her friend tried to explain my results to me. The trouble was that her friend did not know the terms in English. She tried explaining but she couldn't find the right words and I was very confused. What I did understand was that she said I was obese and need to not eat hamburgers, haha. I'm sure that I'm overweight, but obese! I don't know about that. The trainer kept apologizing and her friend would ask to talk to her friend the trainer again. We kept passing the phone back and forth. Her friend then told me she will look up the terms and call back. The trainer put me on an exercise bike and told me to bike for 30 minutes, which I did...even though I didn't ask for any of this to happen :)

The trainer comes back with the phone and I talk to her friend some more. I found out some more of what my chart says, such as how much weight I need to lose. I asked about what I should do to lose the weight. She gave me a basic plan for my schedule: 30 minutes cardio, 20 minutes strength training, and 10 minutes stretching. Then I asked about what food I should eat, since I don't know what is considered healthy food in Korea. All she told me though was not to go out to eat and to eat cucumbers and tomatoes. The teachers go out all the time so I can't really avoid going out to eat. I also went to the grocery store today and didn't find tomatoes! But really I think I will be okay because the food here seems so much healthier than what I was eating in America! I'm always eating vegetables here...and other healthy things like tofu and fish. I also drink water all the time here and I didn't at home. Anyway, it was an interesting conversation talking to the trainer's friend on the phone. It was both frustrating when we couldn't understand each other but also a little funny. We were trying so hard to communicate. In the end the trainer said "I'm sorry!" And I said it was okay! Then she left and didn't come back.

I finished riding the bike, after riding for one hour. Then I did some resistance exercises with my own body weight, some dumbbells, and an exercise ball. There is a cooler where I could consistently fill up my water bottle, which is nice. It is not too different than an American gym that I know of except having to take off your shoes in the locker room, almost all the equipment is in Korean, and there are these interesting stretching machines that I've never seen and I'm afraid of! Such as this machine that holds you upside down. I'll try and take pictures sometime!

So there you have it...my first gym experience was quite the experience. I've been going there everyday since then and I've had no problems :) I discovered that there are some free dance classes so I'm going to check those out. I'll probably write a post about my first dance class experience...I've heard it's really intense :)