The Norwegian Gym

I know, I know, I've been SO bad at keeping up with my blogging! The week after Geiranger turned out to be a BUSY week. I had a group paper due on Tuesday morning and being the only native English speaker in the bunch (and a writer to boot), somehow it was decided that I should write the paper! For the most part this was OK, and I spent Monday and all day Tuesday writing the paper that was due on Wednesday. Then on Wednesday night, I had to spend my free time printing all the readings I had due on Thursday. I was SO exhausted by Friday, and so looking forward to spending the weekend in Oslo.

I didn't do much of anything during the weekend. Worked on homework, tried to catch up on my sleep, and went to the gym as much as possible. Which, by the way, is a whole experience in and of itself! The school has a brand new gym on the second floor, which is visible for anyone in the main hall of the campus...which is kinda annoying to be jogging on a treadmill and look up and there's someone in an elevator- staring at you. Oh well..

So the gym - I LOVE IT - it is so much fun, I can't seem to get enough.

Yeah, I said it- I love the gym and I actually have fun going to it. So much fun within the first week of joining, I went 5 times; including an aerobics class, a step class and a spinning class. Let me tell ya, attending an exercise class in Norwegian is VERY challenging. Not only had it been YEARS since my last aerobics class, I had to spend most of the class watching what everyone else was doing, and by the time I figured out what I should have been doing, I was 2 steps behind everyone else. But I'm so preoccupied by trying to figure out what the Norwegian instructor is saying, the hour flies by! If nothing else, these classes are helping me learn my numbers!

If the classes aren't tricky enough, I've also been utilizing the main sections of the gym as well...which, as an American, is a bit overwhelming. First off, I REALLY NEED TO FIGURE OUT HOW FAR A KILOMETER IS! I don't know how fast I'm walking/jogging, nor do I know how far I've gone. Additionally, the first day I started working out, the machine asked me how much I weighed...not a problem - oh wait, in kilograms ? I had no idea and I thought 100 sounded like a nice, easy, round number... a completely nice, easy, INCORRECT, round number, but I didn't realize that until I came home and typed it into my conversion widget...(I am NO way NEAR 100 kg!) Then the machine kept telling me how many kcals I was burning...what the heck is a kcal?? And of course there are stickers and labels and signs on the machines and walls in the gym, but they are all in Norwegian! Oh and the weight machines! Somehow it didn't occur to me the weights were in kgs, so when I sat down to do some hip abductions, I was thinking lbs, and couldn't figure out why I couldn't do very much weight... turns out I was doing 2.2 times what I thought I was doing!

It was VERY tricky to get used to at first, but soon I caught the hang of the gym and now I'm a fan! I found a scale and I'm happy to report that I have lost 5,4 kgs! For all my American friends, that's 12 lbs! Woo hoo! Every time I'm in Europe, I lose weight, but this is a LOT for me! It could be all the walking, the uncertainty of eating, or my typical pattern of semi-newly single-ness. Whatever the cause, I'm happy and motivated to continue frequenting the gym. Another aspect that I love? As much as I LOVE Europe, Norway and Oslo, every once in a while I like to escape the language barrier, and with my iPod, I can turn up the tunes and escape in a world of American music...a little piece of home :)