I asked a friend of ours who speaks Chinese for some advice. She encouraged us to learn finger counting system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3TEc3OkF68
Quite ingenious, I must admit. It might be extremely useful. As I understand you can show with your fingers numbers up to 99, can’t you?
She is also preparing a small phrasebook for us which I originally intended to use by showing to people the respective phrases, but she has also marked the tones over each Chinese sign saying that “we will quickly sort the tones out and master the pronunciation if we watch this video”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laXqwR9hfJo
I’ve always been keen on learning languages but this time I give up!
T.