The All-Female Gym (+ MANY Digressions, free of charge)

Today I did a free trial at an all-female gym in Agdal, right by Amideast. If you know anything about me, you know that I am hella restless and need to exercise a lot in order to be happy and semi-calm. If I don’t exercise, I get grouchy, can’t sleep, can’t study, and can’t focus on anything. Even walking 5 or 6 miles a day, which has been our average thus far, is not enough. So you can imagine my relief when, almost 3 weeks in, I finally got to the gym.

Quick sidenote: I did try to work out with my roommate a couple times, and we did abs/HIIT workouts on the roof and at some random chateau that we stumbled upon, literally minutes from our house (It looks like a castle/fort!! Very cool), but I was tired of cement and uneven surfaces, and the lack of equipment. I’m an exercise snob.

Anyways, finding the gym was not easy. It was recommended to me by Otmane and a study-abroad student who goes to WestPoint military academy, but in terms of physically getting there, I was flying blind. I was given directions from Mira earlier because she has cell service and therefore GPS, but could only remember “straight, left, straight for a while,” as Leah describes it.

On the way, I passed a dead cat on the side of the road that was extremely large (most cats here are strays, and therefore malnourished and small). It was splayed out and had dried blood on its mouth and on the ground next to it. The only reason I’m telling you this is so I can tell you that when I described said cat to Chloe later, she said, “oh yeah, I saw a dead guy today” and she DID. Apparently she was in the medina buying a purse when she heard drums banging and everyone left their stores to watch a smelly, dead man being carried into a truck. They were all chanting and many men were crying, which was not the case with the cat that I found. But, I digress.

The gym is very pricey because it’s all-female and has very up-to-date equipment, plus free exercise classes all day every day (I was there to witness a bellydancing class), showers, lockers, and a sauna.

While using my free trial promotion, I watched an exercise group do various bodyweight workouts and the lady in charge was yelling in Arabic while one of the women working out was CRYING while simultaneously attempting to plank and do push-ups. I had to literally go behind a wall so she couldn’t see me laughing. Am I a bad person? Absolutely. At least I tried to hide it, though… You know, my dad said that my blog is too much about me and not enough about Moroccan culture, and I’m starting to understand where he’s coming from. Oops.

Long story short, the gym was a great experience. I had my first hot shower in Morocco while I was there, then walked for a while, took 2 completely incorrect trams before finally getting to my stop, and was then followed by a creepy guy who was literally one step behind me (yelling salut, and asking what my name was, etc. in Darija) until I literally ran away and talked to my buds in the market by my host family’s apartment. Then I sprinted across the street and locked the building door behind me, and now I’m safe and sound at home.

This morning, Chloe and I were being yelled at and mocked by some other guy on the street, and he just KEPT blabbing, but our landlord saw him and yelled at him in Darija, which we appreciated way more than I can describe. He left us alone after that.

We’ve had lots of men harass us, but Otmane is the only one who’s ever stepped in to stick up for us. Now we have our landlord on our side, which is very comforting.