Money, Money, Money

That seems to be the topic today. On our first trip over to adopt Spencer and we rented this apartment, we figured we could pay our rent in Tenge. Once we got here though we were told very sternly NO, rent was charged in US dollars per night. Well, we hadn’t brought any cash with us; so we ended up pulling Tenge out of the ATM then walking over and converting it back into US dollars and paid our rent. But you end up losing a nominal amount on the exchange rate.

Right now the exchange rate is about 119-122 Tenge to a dollar, depending on the day. So this time, thinking we were smarter, I pulled out enough US cash and brought it over with us to pay for our rent. Lena asked us to pay ½ the rent yesterday; so we whipped out our stash and paid her. She looked over each bill carefully and then told us several of the $100 bills were unacceptable. What? We asked, it’s cold hard US cash!

We apparently had several bills with watermark stamps on the back. No doubt used back in the good ‘ole USA to “verify” the bill is authentic. Lena tells us, these bills would not be accepted for exchange. We replied, No Way; we’ve been exchanging them and have yet to have a problem with any of the bills. She says, well, that means sometimes you have to take a lower exchange rate. Ah!! Now we get to the heart of it! The exchange rate!!

So off we trotted with about $1500 US dollars, that were rejected by our translator. Had to exchange them over to Tenge, then reconvert them back into cold hard US cash with no marks or creases in good ‘ole Ben’s face.

Bob heads into the exchange booth, and of course Spencer is hot on his heels. They get in the room, and all Spencer wants to do is turn the light on and off. When you’re counting out this amount of cash, you don’t want to be doing it in the dark. So Bob gives Spencer the boot. Once he does, it’s melt down city in the mall for all to see and hear. Everything and anything I say to him or try, makes him scream louder. Bob hears all this going on, so he high tails it out of the booth, not doing a thorough count. We drag Spencer out, literally kicking and screaming all the way outside. Once outside we let him throw his tantrum, and take what time he needs, for all of us to calm down. Took a while but we finally we made it through.

Can’t blame him though, he’d been up since 5am on the nose, and when we put him down for a nap, he only slept about an hour. Tried everything to get him to go back down, but nothing worked. So, decided to forge ahead anyway thinking he would fall asleep in the stroller. Wrong! The walk wasn’t long enough, I suppose. Just another sign that we’ve made the right decision to get him home and back to a regular routine.

In the midst of all this though Bob didn’t have a chance to inspect the bills, to be sure there were no creases or water marks. I just got done looking them over and wouldn’t you know we’ll be at this all over again tomorrow, only this time the stash we need to reconvert has been reduced to $300. Amazing, what one has to do!

We did however get some shopping and sights in on our journey today. I have been wondering for a long time now, where exactly everyone buys their clothes? They can’t possibly buy them in the malls, they are just a few clothing stores I’ve noticed, but they are always very pricey.

Well today we found our answer. Headed over to the outdoor market, and when we were looking to our right, noticed the building next door housed small little booths, selling their goods. By this time the boys were both asleep so we ventured inside and found Mega Mall Galore. It’s a huge building filled from corner to corner of these small booths, selling shoes, bras, underwear, clothes, etc etc.

And these booths are small, some are probably only about 5ft x 5ft but very tall, about 12 feet high. So their products are on display up to the tops of the ceilings. Found one stall, and Bob stopped to try on a shirt (photo attached), but I wasn’t fast enough to catch him with his shirt off! As we had been walking around I began to wonder where does everyone try on the clothes? Well right there, if you’re a man, it’s Ok to whip off your shirt, but for the ladies I noticed most stalls would hang up a bed sheet, and they would duck behind. Amazing!

Also by the way we became the feature attraction, we believe that not too many Americans venture over this way or this far. Most of us have conquered the 2 main malls. But we, most definitely, were the oddity at this bonanza. Tried to catch a photo of it inside, but it doesn’t do it justice. It’s really an interesting sight to see. Last photo is of our apartment. The top floor window is to our patio where we string up our clothes to dry.