Woooooaaaaahh

On Tuesday I had my introductory lesson at the Olympos Sports Center, which is ultimately the campus athletic complex. You would think that when I wanted to spend my 80 euro to join the gym, I would graciously be handed the forms to sign and be on my way. Well, you and I both are wrong on that one. Instead, I had to sign up for an introductory lesson so that I could "learn how to use the gym". Of course, I couldn't even get into one of these lessons until a week after I first inquired about signing up for the gym, thus leaving me to wonder what exactly was going to go down.

Enter Johan. Johan is the 50-something skinny Dutch man who was in charge of introducing me to the gym. Johan's english wasn't exactly perfect, to say the least, which made it all the more hysterical as I followed him from machine to machine to machine so that he could show me how to use them. It really didn't matter that I knew how to use the dumbbells, and run on the treadmill, because Johan was set on making sure he reminded me. If something were hard, he would look me in the eye and say "Wooooooaaaah, sdat es Haard" and then proceed to demonstrate. Rachel and I could barely keep our laughter in. He also caught on quickly that Rachel was the strong athletic one of the two of us since every time he made her demonstrate how to use a machine, he would look down at me (he was very tall... obviously) and say, "Wooooooaaaah, sheee es stroong". There was a lot of head nodding going on since I didn't really know what he was saying half the time. Side note, I think that by the time I leave here I am going to have mastered the head-nodding/pretending you know what is going on movement. I have to use it way too often. Whoever said you could come to the Netherlands and know no Dutch was a bit mistaken (cough, cough WashU Abroad Department cough). 

Regardless, I passed my introductory lesson and can now pay my 80 euro. Sigh.