Exercise, Yoga, and Boundaries

So here I am in Paris....trying to get into shape.
Yep, amidst all the crepes, croissants, and so on, I'm trying to stay fit.
It's not working very well, probably because I wasn't terribly fit in the first place. But nice weather is coming, and there are lots of great places to run. Not that I run. But lots of people do, especially in Paris. Jardin du Luxembourg and Tuileries are both popular spots for runners, and walkers, and probably sunbathers once warm weather comes back to stay. (I'm hopeful- it's sunny out today.) The funny thing is, when we American college kids got to Paris, our program director (whose name I'm not at liberty to disclose because she's probably a SUPERSPY or something) told us that the stereotype about Americans was that we jog. And the OTHER stereotype about Americans is that we're fat.

Humanity is just full of contradictions.

Anyway, I'm definitely getting a tad rounder, and if it weren't for having to walk everywhere, I'd probably have gained about, oh let's say 50 pounds. Luckily, it's not hard to find good places to walk in Paris...but on the other hand, it's not hard to find good food to eat either. In fact, last night my American buddies and I went to B.I.A. No, not a government agency- an American diner, in France. Called Breakfast In America. (When I think of the name I kind of want to say it aloud in a comic book super-hero-narrator voice.) There were bacon cheeseburgers, eggs and bacon, milkshakes, huge chocolate chip cookies...and we ordered in English, from an American waitress. It was pretty crazy, after a month of struggling through French sentences in order to get food. I enjoy attempting to speak French, most of the time. Aside from when I'm with my friends, English feels a lot like cheating. I had a flash-forward to about 4 months in the future, when I'm back in the US, still saying "pardon" and "quelle heure est-il" and my terribly accented "a tout a l'heure" (a toute a l'heure?). People are going to think I'm either really weird, or French. I'm betting on really weird.

Unless I somehow get skinny like a French person! French women don't get fat, you know.

I'm not going to try to get skinny- I'm far too lazy for that. And I've come to realize that dieting is futile. Paris is not the place to cut back. It is, however, a great place for exercise. Walking, obviously, and everything else. Last night we passed a building with a rock-climbing wall. There are tiny gyms everywhere. And there is my personal favorite brand of exercise, yoga. I've been going to a place called Rasa (which I found through my current fave blog, New York in Paris). Classes are a little bit different than I'm used to. Not the poses- the poses are the same, and they're great! It's the teaching style. I'm not from a big city, and the yoga teachers I'm used to, at home and at school, don't constantly correct the people in the class, and certainly wouldn't touch them without permission. And any tips offered are given with patience.
So it was surprisingly hilarious when, at the first yoga class I went to, which was this relaxing iyengar class (I have no idea what iyengar means, but you're welcome to go look it up and let me know), the instructor lady seemed annoyed with all of us. Impatient too. It was pretty great, actually. She actually said to one of the people "Ma'am, ma'am, what are you doing? You're not doing the pose," and then exasperatedly showed us. At another point (I THINK she was talking to me because it was in English, but I'm not sure because I was facing downward) she said sternly, "You need to step your feet back, you're in (name of yoga pose) not Downward Dog."

Which makes me wonder if I've been doing Downward Dog incorrectly this whole time?

But it didn't turn me off of yoga, it actually made me want to do more, to get better and manage to go an entire class without being corrected. And maybe it's what I need- not only to relax, but to know I'm doing the poses exactly right. I went to another class, instructed completely in English this time, and the instructor was great, positive, challenging, etc, and had no qualms about touching us without warning, in order to help our posture. I was somewhat prepared, but I have to admit, I'm still retaining that American space-bubble thing. (If I were a REAL anthropologist, I'd probably be studying this personal-boundaries thing like crazy.)
I don't want to do air-kisses with every person I meet for the first time; I don't even want to shake hands half the time. But there's no way I'm going to say "I'm American, BACK OFF." It's culture, and pretty soon I'll be used to it and I'll start kissing everybody I meet back in the States and people will think I'm even weirder. It works.