Yoga, Italian style

I have joined a gym! And they just began a trial yoga class, yay!  

My friend Patrizia gets me all signed up at the front desk for a good price, and off we go to Studio Two with my new gift - a bright orange towel with "E-MOTION" in large white lettering, slung over my shoulder which gives me a bold feeling and display of "I know what I'm doing"-ness. 

Pilates class two days ago was quite good; the instructor spoke very slowly - like no one in this entire province, I guarantee that, so I added several words to my ever-growing vocabolario of things I'll surely need to say, such as "inhale!" and "through the nose!" 

We enter Studio Two, where there are no lights and only two other women. After five minutes, another woman arrives, speaks a bunch of Italian, laughs, then goes out because - Patrizia tells me - she is looking for "Iron Legs." 

The three Italian women talk up a storm in that dark studio while I do some stretches then get a long blue styrofoam tube to roll around on. Time flies by, and thirty minutes later the instructor, Angelo, appears, only 35 minutes late! 

[Aside: Chiara, my Italian-born yoga teacher in Seattle, attended a yoga class in Italy last year which involved everyone of both sexes stripping naked to put on their yoga pants, smoking cigarettes, talking a lot, doing a few poses, then smoking more cigarettes and resuming the conversation.]

No one is smoking at MY new gym! Now that Angelo is here, I do the yoga of twisting my neck and head around to see what he is doing, because I don't recognize any instruction except "piano" which it turns out doesn't mean I should find one and start playing it, although he does look at me every time he says it, and I can play one. 

An entire hour goes by from one painful position to another, with my added pain of the head-turning, and Angelo never adjusts anyone, as he prefers looking at himself in the mirror. 

On the upside yoga, like pilates, adds to il mio vocabolario - "piano" means move with snail-like slowness from one position to the next, which I cannot do slowly because it hurts my ginocchio, which I love saying because it rhymes with Pinocchio. 

Ciao dall'Italia!