Well....that could be helpful.

I am hardly ever, ever, never a sucker for commercials.

I would really rather keep that money that they are trying to extract from me in my own pocket thankyouverymuch.

But then yesterday I saw an iphone commerical talking about a new app that translates texts into audio of the designated language.

Hello.

Genius.

Did you know I am not fluent in Mandarin?

This could be incredibly helpful.

"Joey, are you hungry?" Yeah. No idea how to say that in Mandarin but text in English? Well that I can do!

So you can imagine my excitement as I raced to get onto iTunes and with the help of my husband...because I am a technological idiot......he found an app and installed it.

A free app at that.

That does not require an internet connection. I believe this is a good thing.

I've been messing around with it the last few hours. It's great! It's not the text to talk one but it has pre-made phrases that you can just touch and it will speak it out.

Beyond that, the app people have the phrases divided into categories. Greetings, People, Travel Information, Dates, Numbers. How fantastic is that?!

And then there is a category entitiled, "Travel Safety". Well. This could be helpful. Preparedness is key after all....at least that's what the Boy Scouts say.

Under the heading of "Travel Safety" it gives you a list of helpful emergent words. Police, Doctor, Hospital,.... Stop Theif!" I'm sorry, what?

Yep. "Stop Theif!" is on there.

Funny right? Yeah. I thought so too. But if you keep scrolling down you get more intensive travel help. With this


"Don't Shoot!"

and my personal fav



"Those drugs aren't mine!"

And let me just tell ya. If I end up needing to know the phrase, "Those drugs aren't mine!" whilst we are in Ch*na. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I'm off to pack my bullet pr*of vest and unpack my drugs*. Busy day. Busy day.