Woohoo!  I think I know the weird ways of the blogger now.  I need to type in a space that is not a box for text and after a few minutes, it appears in a non-active box below in HTML.  Whatever.

So I started really putting the gym membership I bought two weeks ago to good use.  I worked out on Monday and now again today.  Woke up bright and early at 9, which was a killer for me because I usually naturally wake at about 11.  But I got out, I started my day, and it has been amazing already.  Jeon, my neighbor, gave me some tips about exercising, and I took them because he's pretty buff.  He said to do a circuit--which I had heard good things about before--but include cardio as part of it.  I start out by stretching and doing some crunches.  The elliptical machines are really horribly non-ergometric, so next I do the treadmill for 10 minutes, all the leg machines, three sets each, then 10 more minutes of cardio, all the arm machines, and wind up with the ab machines.

This gym is really funny.  First, it's called "Gold's Gym," but it's not the Gold's many people in the states know.  I think it's just a high-class name they stuck on to get people to come.  Most of the machines are either outdated or the padding is wearing down to where some of them kind of hurt.  The second thing is that I am always the youngest person in the gym by a long shot except for the trainers.  Old people (1) galore. And usually they aren't working very hard.  They stand around and b.s. more than they do anything else.  I've seen a guy benching 100 kilos (=220 lbs.) and he still had a gut.  He was about 5'3", too.  I get a huge kick out of every day is that they have two REGULARLY USED fanny-jiggler machines.  You know, with the belt that should vibrate your fat away?  But these ajummas and ajoshis (1) use it on everything: the butt, the waist, the legs, the calves, the arms, the back.  Maybe they use it more like a massage than anything else.  Could be.  When I enter each morning, I grab a pink shirt (that means, "I'm a girl") and a shorts from the pink and blue gym clothes rack.  When I'm done, I take them off, and they wash them for me.  How wonderful is that?

I'm turning over a new leaf in my Korean life.  I was beginning to miss working out, and I'm glad I'm back on track.

1) Ajumma = woman over forty, ajoshi = man over forty.