Planning stage

Today it has suddenly dawned on me  that in a few weeks I will be teaching in Shanghai and then travelling off alone around this vast country. I feel both  apprehensive and excited. God knows what is waiting ahead of me!  I've given up learning basic MandariN. I know how to ask for the toilet and how to say thanks, no and I'm an English teacher. That will have to do! I've heard that most people speak a local dialect anyway so I won't understand anything no matter how hard I plough  through books and listen to CDs. The hardest thing will be being in a country where EVERYTHING is in Chinese characters. A kind of parallel freaky universe. And no amount of work is going to enable to be able to read Chinese!