chinese tones

I head to Taiwan in a few weeks. So I am self teaching myself a bit of Chinese. In this language, it is all about the tones, inflecting the voice to go up, down, or up and down. This is terribly difficult for me who puts a lot of natural inflection in my voice when speaking. It is a constant battle of repeating exactly what I heard and not raising my voice to indicate a question. Thank goodness no one is in the car listening to me.