Chiara In The Pond

The Internet is broken
First day in Beijing.... Still a bit tired, but I've finally started this amazing experience.
I flew to Beijing via Stockholm taking Air China who is not the best luxury company but still quite OK.
Once landed I had to show as the others the passport and I've immidiatly GULPED thinking to have left it on the airport while preparing the entrance papers. Luckly that was a false alarm!
At airport check point there was on the side of the desk a rating sistem with 4 faces:
:|
Yes! I could rate the burocratic not very smily guy who was going through my passport almost like pop idol! I thougth it was a funny thing, and, after he finished his work with me, a beep indicated to me that I could provide a mark and I did with a nice .
After a long ride by taxi (about 60 minutes for 6.80 euros) I found one of my co-adventurer waiting for me at the hotel: Pavel.
He showed me a little around (too tired for a proper tour) and I could immidiatly appreciate the huge skapescrapers, the blowing wind on the flat Beijing, the very busy people walking, driving, cycling around in a funny mess (I know that it'sinappropriate, but it really reminded me Madrid!).
I also met another collegue, Jia, later on, and we had a proper tour of the local Soho with nice caffes and shops (a little too expensive compared to chinese wages).
Of course I could not stop myself from paying a visit to the local Opera (I mean the office) where I met some chinese collegues that I did not have the pleasure to see before.
The atmosphere was very friendly. People were working even if it was saturday, but even if busy they looked pretty happy and enjoying what they were doing!
After that we all gather together at Pavel's for a proper Checz/Chinese meal that was amazing (well except a strange red wine.... I guess I have to live with the fact that there could be differences in defining what a wine is...).
Once back to the hotel, I asked for instruction about Internet access since I knew there should be but could not find LAN cables or Wi-Fi available.
After a few missunderstanding I got the answer "The Internet is broken". That sounded a bit weird to me, but I think I got the concept. I asked when the Internet would have been "repaired", but then the reception lady looked even more worried or scared and said she does not know.
I guess it was just a missunderstanding, but I found it anyway pretty funny... For today that's all Chiara