>>119797>pic relatedAs for the class. It's a great thing and will be fun. You might have asked them if you could just try them out though to decide what to buy and you probably would have gotten a lot of instruction just from talking to them during this. You'd also save $80.
Spend the money on a good paddle. Someone already linked a nice entry level paddle from bending branches. Get something like that. Get a life vest too. These can be expensive and it might be worth figuring out what style you want, what color and all that from shopping around. Get a vest but if you want to cheap out, do it here for now or shell out the money and get one that is shaped like this with all that room around the shoulders:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/350576394264?hlp=false&var= 