I’ve just come back from lunch. I’ve managed to eat Chinese food, in China, with chopsticks and not totally embarass myself. Ate some new food, new vegetables and a seemingly different type of seaweed than I have eaten before. It tasted good though. I even think Kit would have liked some of it (once she got over the fact that it looked different and some things were green things).
I arrived safely after a flight that was fine (except for getting up rather early to get to Sydney to then take a sane timed flight). Beijing seems to be a bit like the firefly world, except with less flying cars. You’ve got heaps of stuff in English and Chinese. It could be really interesting to live here and experience things.

There’s a national English language newspaper which is fairly up to date on world events – the fact that our dear Mr Howard is going to go to the election seems to be news here! It’s not packed with local news, which would be interesting to read (although I think I’ll have to learn to read first).

The hotel is a short walk from the office (down the street, across the road). Oh, the roads are at least 7 lanes – they’re big!

Hotel is pretty nice, probably about half the price of what I’d expect to pay back home. Breakfast was good – some totally delicious watermelon. Honestly thinking of just having watermelon for breakfast tomorrow :)

Although it’s rather obvious that the hotel is aimed at western visitors. At breakfast you could only really tell you’re in China by: looking out the front window at all the Chinese writing or looking at the waiters and waitresses and noticing they all a) spoke Chinese to each other and b) were Chinese. About 5 languages before my first coffee – what a way to start the day!

At some point I’m going to have to have some Chinese tea – it seems like a real obvious must-do. Although maybe I should give in at some point and buy coffee from starbucks as well….