just another crazy tuesday

The alarm goes off at 10am…I send Audrey and Julie a very brief text “Yoga?” and then press the snooze button. At 10:15am, my phone sings “You’ve got mail” and I see Audrey replied “Yes.” Using up whatever willpower I could muster, I roll out of my bed and crawl down the steep stairs with sleepy eyes. The way I do it is, only open one eye at a time so I can rest my eyes alternately. Sounds crazy but it works. Anyways, I look at the clock, and then in the mirror. I guess there’s really nothing I can do to fix my appearance with only 10 minutes left so I brush my teeth, pull on my new 3000Won yoga pants and put my hair in a messy bun. Shit, its 10:30 already and I run out to the elevators. Brr….the morning air is cold and damp.

Around the corner I meet my also sleepy-just-rolled-out-of-bed yoga partner. The cold air feels somewhat refreshing and we walk to class, complaining of how tired and hungry we were. After a couple traffic lights, we arrive. Being too lazy to walk up 4 flights of stairs, we wait for the elevator. After all, we are going to do some exercise…..

Each lesson fills me with a mixture of anticipation, and also dread. I look forward to it, enjoy it, but also dread it. Why? Because the yoga instructor has made it explicitly clear that we are “waeguk” ..which means Foreigners. She calls us AU-De-Li and Jay-E-Mi and sometimes the more generic term “Engrish teacher”…at which point, every other person has turned around to look at us. And sometimes, she’ll say something which we won’t understand, but then everyone else laughs and looks at us. From her tone, she seems friendly. But sometimes it’s hard to tell….she could’ve said “stupid idiots, so not flexible at all” with a warm smile and a non-threatening laugh and I’ll laugh along just to be polite (and also to hide my embarrassment).

And of course, we have no idea what to do. I mean, if we’re sitting or standing, it’s not hard to copy the movements of the people around. However, if we’re lying on the mat staring at the ceiling…its a different story altogether. I think the most workout I get is my neck. I am constantly straining my neck to see what’s going on. And there’s no point in looking next to me, because Audrey is usually doing to same thing as me : straining her neck with a confused look on her face.

One thing however, that makes me really enjoy this class is not the fact that we get laughed at, or that the instructor comes over to pull our legs and tug our hands (like real-life playdo), or the fact that my neck might be getting stronger. Rather, it’s just the element of surprise within the class. We never really know what we’ll be doing each class. Sometimes, she makes us stick our tongues out and make funny noises. Sometimes, she makes us do sit ups and squats. Sometimes, it feels more like soccer training with lots of jumping.

But one thing’s for sure, this is definitely one hell of a yoga experience………..