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A special two weeks are ahead for the Kentucky volleyball team.Before sunrise on Monday morning, UK student-athletes and coaches began the first leg of a journey to China for a cultural exchange trip. After a long day of travel, the Wildcats will arrive in Shanghai around 2 p.m. local time on Tuesday.From there, the team has a packed schedule, combining learning, competition and sightseeing. The Cats will study at Shanghai University, learning about Chinese culture and sharing some of their own as well. They will also play six matches over the course of two weeks against some of the top volleyball teams in the world. And when they aren’t in the classroom or on the court, the Cats will be taking in some of China’s most famous landmarks, from the Great Wall to Tiananmen Square.Traveling with the team is UK’s Andrew Maske,  an art history professor who specializes in the arts of Asia. Professor Maske spent time with the team for the week leading up to the trip, teaching the team some basics about Chinese philosophy. The team also practiced tai chi and brush calligraphy to prepare to head to the Far East.Throughout the trip, the Cats will be chronicling their experience through a series of blogs. We will be sharing them here — as well as other social-media, photo and video content — on Cat Scratches. We’ve also created a special URL — UKVBtoChina.com — so you can find all of the entries in one place.To get it started, here are some tweets from right before the team departed and the week of preparation for the trip.

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