I just returned from the gym, and it occurred to me that I haven’t mentioned the gym that I go to here. It was sort of difficult for me to find a gym here- they all seem to be either dumpy but cheap weight lifting places, or state of the art gyms for rich people. Since I wanted more than weights, and since those dumpy little places seemed to be for men only, I ended up with the rich people gym. It is really more gym than I need, and it is much more expensive than my gym in NYC. But it is nice to be able to use a pool and jacuzzi. And to assuage my guilt for spending so much money on a gym membership, I make myself go 5 times a week, so it is probably worth it in the end.

The gym is very, very Americanized. All of the staff are Lebanese, but everyone speaks English, all of the classes are conducted in English, the weights are labeled in pounds and kilos. A lot of ex-pats go there. I either go and do my own thing or else go to a spin class. Now that I am actually writing this post, I realize that my gym is not very interesting- if you have been to a gym in the US, you can picture this one, though it is slightly fancier than most.

However, I do get a real kick out of overhearing women talk in the locker room. The locker room is an excellent venue for hearing a linguistic phenomenon specific to upper-class Lebanese, which is switching between THREE languages fluidly in casual conversation in the space of one spoken sentence. It’s very much like being on the subway in New York and hearing two people interspersing English and Spanish words, but 3 (English, Arabic, and French) is a whole other level.