One of the many opportunities that the Intercambio de Communidades non-profit organization offers is aerobics classes. It might seem out of place for an organization that is mainly geared towards helping immigrants survive in a foreign place to offer aerobics classes. When I asked Lee, co-founder of Intercambio, what were his reasons for offering these classes, he responded that he had three: “It’s super fun, it builds community and is great exercise.”
And it’s true. I had never been to an aerobics class before, but if this is what all aerobics classes are like, I’ve been missing out. The energy was incredible. I had so much fun trying to replicate both Lee and Shawn’s moves and I could tell everyone else did too. Letty, a community member, says she enjoys attending these classes because of the environment and the exercise.
The classes are approximately one and a half hours long, and have about 30 minutes built into them for breaks with the remaining time broken up into three sessions of aerobics. These three sessions consist of lively dancing to just about every kind of different genre of music, played in both Spanish and English.
The classes are led by the co-founders of Intercambio, Lee and Shawn, who by the way are amazing dancers. The class I attended on October 9th consisted of about 16 or 17 adults but attendance varies from week to week. The attendees are mixed within the Intercambio organization. Some are students, others are volunteer teachers and, of course, there are the founders.
The aerobics classes are offered at both the Boulder office at 11:30 on Saturday mornings and in the Longmont YMCA on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s at 6:30pm.
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This post was written by a guest blogger, Adilene Guadalupe Tarin, a CU Student.
