outdoor aerobics program: heyrobics.

attention/warning: white boy dancing.

Soho area of the CBD.

(Thursday, 12 Sept 2013) Jehanne, our school's part-time Drama instructor, invited Maria and me to the evening Heyrobics outdoor training aerobics club, a series of multi-level fitness classes run by a group of Swedish expats.  Disclaimer: Jehanne is from a town about an hour outside of Paris.  Standing tall, she's about four feet in height.  Well, maybe four feet and 8 inches.  She's a vibrant, bright-eyed, outgoing, fearless, athletic French woman.  I am none of these things.  

Marching band is about the closest thing to a coordinated "athletic" activity in which I've participated during my lifetime.  But, determined to break my pattern of refusing social invitations because I'm afraid of looking like a Class A Moron, I accepted.  Maria agreed to join me.  

About a 30-minute subway ride later from our respective "hoods", we all met up in the Central Business District (CBD), greeted by a maze of elevated freeways, shopping plazas, and beautifully-lit high rises.  As I've mentioned before: we were in yet another layer of the city.  

After about a ten-minute walk through the muggy, smoggy haze of the city, we arrived at a vast, outdoor athletic park.  It was packed.  About ten basketball courts, full of pick-up games taking place, flanked each side of an open, artificial turf field.  The view around us was simply amazing.

After an hour-long class, all twenty of us, comprised of foreigners from various countries around the world, dancing through a myriad of insane aerobic movements, all of which made me look like Elaine from Seinfeld (see "The Little Kicks" episode), were sweaty, exhausted...and spiritually, emotionally, and physically exhilarated.  I was hooked. 

I promptly purchased a membership.