Body Combat

As I sit eating my Picard for dinner, I thought I would tell you about my day.  Just to make you all jealous, I am having the most delicious diner - japanese salad which includes teriyaki chicken with bean sprouts, carrots and edamame as well as grilled vegetables.  I am so thankful that Stella gave me this microwave - without it I don't know what I would do.  

My day started trekking out to Lavallois, which is right on the outskirts of Paris where Nathalie lives.  I met her at her apartment and we walked over to Club Med Gym.  On the topic of Picard, I told her that I have fallen in love with it and she told me that the standing joke with her single friends about the store is that they refer to it as their "Husband".  I think I should open the franchise in New York.  I think it would do even better than Trader Joes! SHOCKER 

At the Gym, I did a class called Body Combat.  Nathalie regularly does classes and dragged me along.  Being the uncoordinated being I am, I was wary about joining her, however I decided to take the plunge.  Body Combat is what we would call kickboxing.  She did a step class before the combat and I chose to do the machines as the coordination involved in step is even harder than kickboxing and I was already going to make a fool of myself, and didn't want to do it in an intermediate step class.  Body Combat was a lot of fun.  It was very different from the class I once did at the YMCA in Montreal - the instructors at all the Club Med Gyms across Paris follow the same choreography that comes from this workout DVD company called Les Mills  (http://www.lesmills.com/) and every trimester they switch the choreography.  This means that if I choose to go to another of the gyms closer to me and take the same class, I will most likely be doing the same class.  What I really liked was that for each song the instructor played there was different punching/kicking choreography that lasted the entire song and switched as the song switched.  The Europeans do not believe in air conditioning, like we do in the US and Canada, and thus the Gyms are not air conditioned.  I haven't decided if I like this or not.  In the gyms I think I like it as it makes me sweat more, however in the workplace I am not sure I do.

After the gym, I returned home met up with a new friend named Alexa.  A colleague in New York connected us through email.  She is one of his clients daughters.  We met for drinks on Friday and hit it off immediately.  Unfortunately, she is leaving June 2nd.  She has been here for the year studying abroad from Sarah Lawrence.  Today I met her and her friend Joyce at Canal St. Martin for drinks.  The weather was beautiful and we sat outside chatting at a little café.  Joyce is originally from california and will be staying here over the summer - Alexa wanted me to meet her for that reason.  She was really nice and accommodating to the fact that I don't know many people here - she was in the same boat when she arrived a year ago.  She will be in Berlin this week with her brother, however when she comes back she said that she would call me to do something.  :)

I had the most refreshing drink today.  Its called a Monaco.  I am not a beer drinker at ALLL...however because of the heat I was in the mood.  It is beer with syrop de fraise.  It was very delicious.  

I returned home and decided to stay in and relax tonight.  I struggled deciding if I should go to a café and sit alone like last night and chose against it.  I can wait for tomorrow - no need to feel that desperate haha