First day at school

A full day's travelling took us from KL, via Shanghai (where, running from the moment we got off the plane in Pudong airport, we thankfully just made it across the city to catch our next flight from Hongquai airport) to Jining, the nearest airport to Qufu Shaolin Kung Fu school.
Yes you did just read that right. Despite neither of us ever having done any martial arts previously, we've chucked ourselves into the deep-end and decided to spend the next 2 weeks training with Shaolin monks.
The first 24hrs felt very much like a first day at a new school - and one that we'd joined halfway through the year what's more. And this isn't some plush modern private school...think old-school boarding house at its worst!

Having completed the paperwork and been told about some of what was to follow, we were shown to our basic room, with 2 wooden beds with 1/2 inch mattresses and sparse furniture. Despite being knackered from the journey, a somewhat restless night followed as we tried to find a comfortable position to sleep.
We had the luxury of a lie in on our first morning, being allowed to skip the 6am training session and join everybody at breakfast at 7am...our first experience of school meals.
A loud shrill on a whistle indicated we were allowed into the dining room and we were immediately swamped by the c.60 other students pushing to get their rations and a seat at a table. Breakfast consisted of 2 boiled eggs, a steamed bread roll and a sachet of what we later discovered was soya milk powder. Many of the older students had their own porridge oats to mix with the milk powder and hot water, but we had to suffice with what had been issued. In the following 10 mins, the food was wolfed-down, with little to no conversation (particularly on our table, as we'd unluckily chosen to sit with some of the least social students) and everybody immediately left, with a trail of destruction behind.
8am was the first of the bi-weekly room inspections, which given we'd been in our room for less than 12hrs we thankfully passed with no issues.
And so just before 8.30am it was time to line up outside for the first training session - which started again with a shrill whistle. As 'newbies', we needed to introduce ourselves to all the other students and then the Shaolin masters - making sure we bowed as we'd been instructed to so we didn't offend anybody before we started. Thankfully there were two other newbies, who were also assigned the same Master as us, which made the whole thing slightly less daunting.
Together we muddled our way through the various routines for the rest of the day (despite little guidance) including further training sessions at 10.20-11.30, 15.00-16.30 and 16.45-17.45; lunch at 12.00; dinner at 18.00 and mandarin classes from 18.45-19.45.
During the day, we realised that, whilst some of the students had been there for several months (or even years), there were quite a few others who were still relatively new themselves - and some of them were actually friendly and helpful. And having done one training session, the second was more predictable. And having gone through the breakfast routines, lunch and then dinner was also more predictable (and the food pretty much identical to the 19 lunches and dinners over the next 2 weeks).
And so it was that by 21.30, as we started to nod-off in preparation for an early start the next day, we were pretty much settled into the routines of school.

Ps we have also found out that Blogspot is a black-listed website in China - so this (and the Thailand blogs we didn't manage to post before getting here) will have to wait - hopefully only for a couple of weeks until we reach Hong Kong.