Italian Spinning Class

Because I've been doing so much of this lately....

I decided to take my first workout class in Italy. What a trip, let me tell you. My friends who live in the same pensione as me, Anna and Nicole, decided we would all skip our set meal at 7pm tonight to head to an Italian Spin (cycling) Class. So we ventured in our cute workout clothes to a gym about 10 minutes away. We walked in, and it looked like any other gym. To get a full membership is over 100 euro, but if you sign up to take just the spinning class its 80 euro for 10 classes. Our first one was free, thank goodness, because I'm still trying to understand how I feel about the whole thing.

Anyways, we walk into this tiny room which is maybe about the size of my single room. So we're talking like smaller than most adult closets. There are about 10 bikes, and 2 tiny windows. The instructor, a youngish Italian lady, shuts both the windows, and the one small door. I'm hot at this point and we haven't even begun the class. She turns of the lights for some weird dim lighting.  Then comes the Italian techno music. At this point, I am really thinking why did I skip my two course, delicious fattening meal for this? Then all the sudden, she gets off her bike and tries to direct me about fixing the bottom of my bike, in full fledged Italian. Now don't get me wrong- I can totally get by with most of my Italian, in fact I'm pretty good. But the combo of the dire heat, her yelling over the techno, and me simulatenously trying to pedel did not work in my favor. She eventually conveyed she needed me to get off in the middle of the class to fix the bottle of the rusted (definately bought off Ebay) bike. The class got easier, as I began to accept the fact that Italian spinning class is meant to take place in a sauna. As our workout began to get easier, and a cool down mode as it was ending, the techno fades, and on come U2 "one love". Ended the class on a great, entirely confusing note!

We left feeling sweaty, satisfied but mildly confused about what we just attended. We'll see if I make the next week class.