My friend and I are thinking about joining the Shaolin monastery in China, but we've got a few questions that we'd like to have the answers to.

-Which temples are "proper", so to speak? We sure as hell aren't going to give up everything to workout in an old factory building in sweatpants, if you know what I mean.

-How do you join? Do you just knock on the door and hope that the Abbot takes you in even though you can't speak a snivel of Chinese?

-Dental health, how do they do it? Do they just eat the kinds of food that keeps your teeth healthy?

-Allergies. Are you allowed to bring medication of any sort as personal belongings? (I imagine this would be hard to arrange without a translator).

-Can you just walk out the front door when you're done? Do they like, keep your passports for you and all that if you've agreed to only stay for a year if you don't like it?

-What's the diet?
-How's the showers?
-How many non-chinese are there, and how many join up at a "later" age?
-How are the rooms/beds?
-We're not exactly super-fit, so will we even survive? I know that an English fella joined up at 17, but he'd been doing kung fu for a few years.
-Are you allowed to leave the temple when you're not practicing?

That's all for now.

TL;DR: How do we Shaolin?