Our Gym

I think in one of my earlier posts I explained how hard it is to exercise outside around here... the streets are super crowded, the drivers are crazy, and the weather is way too hot and humid.  I did bring along my Hip Hop Abs DVDs, which is like aerobics, but hopping around my living room was just getting old after a while, so we decided to look for a good gym.  

We ended up finding a great gym called Wills.  It's a chain, just like Fitness World is at home, with about 7 locations around Shanghai.  (You can see their website at: www.willsgym.com/index_en.html or google it if that link doesn't work).   Unfortunately there were no locations super close to our place; the closest one is about 10-15 minutes by taxi, depending on traffic.  Anyways, that's the location we ended up going with.  It's really modern looking with tons of cardio machines, weights, and the best part.... it has a POOL!!  Swimming is my favorite thing in the entire world to do, so this was important.  Here's a pic of it:  

Now the crazy thing is that, as you'll notice, this pool is shaped kind of like 2 kidney beans and has no lanes.  You can swim in a straight line all the way across, but the Chinese people seem to enjoy swimming in much the same fashion as they drive.  This means swimming/thrashing in circles thru the 2 kidney beans makes perfect sense in their minds, and doesn't mesh well with Andrew and I trying to power thru from one end to the other in straight lines.  Arghh!  We've definitely had our share of collisions!  In addition, the pool is manned by a very sleepy lifeguard who is often found nodding off in the corner, while his boss sits in the lifeguard room smoking (a VERY high percentage of Chinese people smoke by the way... and everywhere, like in restaurants, offices, etc).  Now it's fine with me if this guy wants to ruin his own lungs, but the problem is he leaves the door open into the pool room, so whenever you come up for air you inhale a bunch of smokey goodness from Mr. Boss.  They kind of give me a funny look when I get out of the pool and go close the door, but that's they way I roll!  

Now let me tell you about the cardio machines.  They are great, but I HATE them!!  I have always been an outside-exercise kind of girl.  That means I prefer soccer over basketball, and running outside over running inside on a treadmill.  I somehow just have a really tough time, mentally, running in one spot.  5 minutes is terrible, 10 minutes is deadly, and 15 minutes is where I go shooting off the back of the treadmill.  Seriously!  Which is really strange since I can run happily for over an hour without problems when I'm outside.  All this to say that I can't stand being on a treadmill, but I've come to the conclusion that if I don't want to return to Canada next summer as a sack of lard, I'd better be movin' my but throughout the year, and if that means being on a stupid treadmill, then so be it!  

Okay, enough about that.  Moving on... when we signed up for the one-year gym membership, the guy threw in a "bonus" for us.  This was comprised of a tacky Wills gym bag each, and a 500RMB gift certificate each to the spa below the gym.  (Remember, divide 500RMB by about 6 to get the Canadian dollar value).  We were pretty stoked about the gift certificates and were hoping to get really nice massages or something with it.  So we went downstairs to the counter to schedule our luxury pampering date.  Here is another example of Chinese scamming: the only thing that these GCs were actually good for were facials, which all cost around 300RMB.  The GCs were for 500RMB, so there wasn't enough on them to get 2 facials, and we also weren't allowed to combine our remaining 200RMB each for one of us to get a second facial.  Anyways, all complaining aside, the facials were really really nice.  They had Andrew and I lie down side-by-side on these gurney-things (that's what you lay on at a spa), wrapped us all up in towels on our heads and shoulders, and went to work for 1.5 hours.  During that time we had all kinds of goops, scrubs, and masks spread on our faces.  Our skin felt really tight and relaxed after all that.  (I know tight and relaxed are kind of opposites, but if you've ever had a facial you'll know how your skin can be both these things at the same time).  Here's a couple pics of Andrew waiting for the process to start, after being "towelled":

Now here's the kicker: just 2 days after purchasing this big one-year gym membership we were walking around the corner from our house when we saw a big sign on the outside of a building in construction: "Wills Gym Opening Soon".... arghhhh!  We couldn't believe it!!  The timing was incredible (and not in a good way).  Of course we've stopped by the new location a couple times (where they're already trying to sell memberships) to try to change our membership over to this new location.  So far they've said no, but there's a saying here in China that "Everything is negotiable", so we're not giving up!