Improvement!

Ha! I just made a hotel reservation. On the phone. In Chinese. And even convinced the guy that the triathlon I'm coming for is on Saturday, not Sunday- that in fact there are 2 days of competition.
This might not sound overly exciting considering that I've been here for 3 years and communication isn't that scary of a thing for me anymore. But phone conversations have kind of been the last fronteir. The lack of visual feedback, the fact I can't pantomime the words I don't know, and of course the fact that the other party can and does hang up on me sometimes... and for some reason hotels are the worst. And of course the inexpensive ones are the ones where they can't speak English. But I did it!