Getting revved up for China

I've got three weeks before the reality of travel to China will really hit me. In the meantime, I'm pouring concrete in the daydream by buying batteries for my creaky old camera and making lists and doing some research.

I now know how to write the pictograms for numbers 1-10, though I haven't figured out whether those numbers are the ones that get used in a store, or if the Chinese rely on Arabic numerals for that.

I also did some research on Chinese bathrooms. I gleaned useful advice: bring your own toilet paper. Most public toilets are squat toilets. That will take some getting used to.

1 Chinese yuan is worth about 15 cents. According to my coworker who was in China just last year before the Olympics, Beijing buses cost about a yuan for a ride.

Tomorrow I'm going to the library to pick up some travel guides and a book about Chinese calligraphy--as though I didn't need to feel even worse about my bad handwriting.

Still haven't purchased a plane ticket. And of course I won't know the status of my Chinese visa for a week and a half, and that makes me feel paranoid. I never like forking over important documents. (On a similar note, the woman at the financial aid office checked to make sure I had actually signed my documents, today. What, did I look like a newb?)