Mind on my money and my money on my mind

For those Facebookers out there, you may have noticed the two new photo albums that popped up the other night. I went out last Saturday to some ruins that are in downtown Amman, and I would love to write about it, but I'm on a public computer at TAGKS and consequently don't have the photos with me. And what would a post about ruins be without photographs of said ruins?

(Side note, in case I've forgotten to mention this: TAGKS is the off-campus study center that's one floor above the CIEE program office in Khalifeh Plaza. It's a hangout for all the American students and the nerdier Jordanian ones. Because, seriously, if you're going to walk a quarter of a mile away from campus just to study, you're probably a nerd. This building also houses a Subway, a Gloria Jean's coffee shop, a Western Union, an Ahli Bank location, and a Curves. Good stuff. I was in Gloria Jean's before this, but the Celine Dion was getting to be a bit much, and I was afraid that "Total Eclipse of the Heart" might be next. Oh, Bonnie Tyler...)

When purchasing my cappuccino at Gloria Jean's, I pulled out a twenty, thinking to myself, "Great! This place does good morning business. They probably have enough change to handle a twenty. And I don't have to feel that bad about it because my purchase is over 2 JDs!" A lot of thought just for getting change, right? Wrong. Breaking bills is serious business here.

In fact, a lot of things about money have taken some adjusting. I thought it might be interesting, for those international-money-collectors out there, to hear about the Jordanian currency. It's the dinar, which is abbreviated JD (like $), and a lot of the time, hip people call them "jay dees" instead of dinars. I'm hip. (And with it?) The dinar is divided into 100 piastres, which are also called qirsh. I don't know why they have two words for the same thing. Usually I just call them piastres. Each piastre is made up of ten fils - meaning that one dinar is a thousand fils. Most taxi meters are in fils, and some other establishments (the UJ cafeteria, for instance) print receipts in JDdinars.fils format instead of JDdinars.piastres (like $dollars.cents). After breaking that twenty at the coffee shop, I have one of every coin and bill, excluding the 25-piastre coin.


Coins.

There are four main coins that I've seen in use here. Reportedly there are 1 piastre or 1 dinar coins, but I've never seen one. The coins I have seen are (to use American parlance) nickel, dime, quarter, and half-dollar. In fact, we Americans usually call them that just out of convenience. They have real names, which we haven't really bothered to learn. If you ask the price for something (a bag of Dorito's at the university convenience store, for example), the price will just be given to you as a number - hamza thalatheen. Piastres is implied.

The nickel is the smallest, which is probably a little bit bigger in size than our nickel. The ten-piastre piece is slightly larger radius than the five, maybe about the size of American quarters, and is thicker. Both look silvery. The quarter here is heptagonal and bronzy, and that's the one that I don't have on me. The half-dinar is also heptagonal, and a little larger than an American quarter. It has a silvery center circle with a bronzy ring around it.

The faces on the coins... vary. You know how we have Lincoln and FDR and Jefferson and all those? Jordanian coins have the reigning king on them. So, current coins have King Abdullah II, while older ones have King Hussein. I haven't seen any Talal or Abdullah I coins. Right now I have six Abdullah fives, two Hussein fives, two Abdullah tens, one Hussein ten, and one Hussein half-dinar.


Bills.

Unlike the coins, the bills have fixed faces. Interestingly, the bills are all different sizes and colors. Way more exciting than American currency. One side of the bill has the face and the Arabic numeral, and the other side has some other picture and the English numberal. Yes, what we call "Arabic numerals" are called "English numerals" here, because the Arabic numerals are, surprisingly, not the same. Talk about a misnomer. One and nine are the same, five looks like a zero, six looks like a seven, zero looks like a decimal point, and the use a comma instead of a decimal. Fun stuff.

The one-dinar bill is the smallest (in value and in size). It's green, with a picture of Sharif Hussein bin Ali (Arab King). Direct translation of the caption under the picture. He was the father of King Abdullah I, and if you want me to go into a detailed history of the formation of Jordan, then I can, thanks to JAIC. Let's just say that although he was never the king of Jordan, he's an important figure in its history. The reverse side of the bill has an image of the Arab Revolt, a key event in the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Arab nationalism that Sharif Hussein initiated. More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.

The five is slightly larger (in value and in size), red, and features King Abdullah bin Hussein. Bin means "son of." The other side has a drawing of Ma'an Palace. Ma'an was the first city that (future) King Abdullah arrived at when he traveled to Transjordan in the early twentieth century to establish a kingdom in the British mandate. Long story.

The ten is larger still - do you see a pattern? It's blue, with an image of King Talal bin Abdullah. Next guy down the line. Because of mental health problems, he had to abdicate his throne after just over a year of rule, and that was when King Hussein took the throne. The reverse is an image of the first parliament, which I would give you a historical story about, but we're only three weeks into that class.

The twenty is greenish bluish and features King Hussein bin Talal. The famous one. I mean the really famous one. His fourth wife was Queen Noor, the famous one. His second wife was named Alia, and she died in a helicopter crash. The Queen Alia International Airport is named after her. The current king, Abdullah II, is his oldest son, who happens to be from King Hussein's second marriage. Before you get any weird ideas about polygamy, King Hussein was never married to more than one woman at a time. Interestingly, King Abdullah's mother was British, full British. The royal family doesn't look as "Arab" as you might expect. But back to the bill. The opposite side has an image of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

And finally, the fifty. It has a picture of King Abdullah (bin Hussein), but interestingly doesn't have a caption saying who he is. I guess, because he's the current king, we're just supposed to know. After all, his picture is everywhere. I mean everywhere. It seems like you can't enter a room without seeing a photograph of King Abdullah, or King Hussein, or the whole royal family, or all of the above. They're so well-loved here. This bill is vaguely lavenderish and has a picture of Raghadan Palace on the back. That's the current palace, located in downtown Amman.


"Sarah," you say, "why in the world do you have a fifty on you? Isn't that, like, seventy dollars?" Yes. Well. We receive our monthly CIEE travel stipend in the form of fifties. Gross. It's so hard to break bills here. (I think that'll be the next paragraph.) I carry one just in case I need lots of extra cash and hopefully can find a place to break it. Earlier this week, I went to an ATM, thinking that some simple twenties would be easier to use than the fifty. American ATMs only do denominations of twenty, right? Right. Assuming that, I just withdrew a hundred - service fees are a pain, so it's best to withdraw a lot at once - and assumed that I would receive five twenties. Well, I got two of them. Plus two fives. (Wonderful! Fives are so easy to use!) Plus a fifty. What? Seriously? I want anything BUT a fifty. Sigh.

Ones are the best. Oh, I could probably operate almost entirely in ones here. Because things are usually cheap here. (I think that'll be the next paragraph.) But because things are so cheap, it's hard to find a place that has enough change on hand to break a big bill. Subway didn't even have enough to give me change on a five for a half-dinar cookie. I pulled out all my coins, adding up to forty piastres, and I got a ten-piastre discount on the cookie. Cool, but annoying - I needed to break that five to get home. The cab ride from the university to my house is almost exactly one dinar, and cabbies aren't reliable to have good change. Finding change requires a lot of little extraneous purchases, most of which are bad for my health. Need to break a five or a ten while around campus to get a cab fare? Go to the convenience store and buy a bag of chips, a chocolate milk box, or a candy bar. Breaking fifties is an art form that actually requires much planning. I broke one to buy admission tickets at Jerash. I broke another at the bookstore across the street from the unviersity - even though I was buying less than five JDs worth of stuff. I hate doing that. It feels especially weird to pay with a twenty at the UJ cafeteria, where I've never gotten more than 1.5JDs of food. But it's a great place for change because they do business in small amounts, and so much of it. Seriously, art form. All that thinking at the Gloria Jean's counter wasn't abnormal.

It's a hidden blessing, really, that bills are so hard to break, because that difficulty stems from how low the prices are. Trying to figure out what my cappuccino cost in American dollars, I made a list of some of the things I bought in Jordan and converted them all over.

Regular cappuccino: $3.29
Subway cookie: $0.70
Small falafel sandwich: $0.42
Small shwarma sandwich: $0.70
One scoop of Gerard's ice cream: about $1.40 Guys, this stuff is tastier than Coldstone. Flavors like Ferrero Roche, Tiramisu, and Nutella. Heaven.
Cafeteria meal: $1.26 This particular meal included three pitas, a bowl of hummus, a bowl of some questionable vegetable thing that I split with a friend, a piece of cake, and a bottle of Aquafina.
Eightish pieces of baklava from Habibah, a dessert place so good that I can't describe it: $1.40
Trip to Jerash, if you take the bus both ways and get the student/resident ticket price: $2.94
Meal at Hashem's, which includes pita, falafel, hummus, bean mixture thing, red sauce thing, green sauce thing, and sweetened hot tea with mint leaves on the side: $1.40

Before mentioning the last two, I should note the strictness of Jordan's copyright laws. I don't think they exist.
15 DVDs: $14.00
All my textbooks: $30.80 These books are all photocopied things - Richmonders, think of Wythken and Uptown Color. About 2 inches thick for AA, 10JD. About three inches thick for JAIC, 10JD. Roughly half an inch thick, supplementary textbook for standard Arabic, 2JD.

These prices are all amazing, but that's because I'm buying Jordanian things. Not that I want American things very much - I walk past a McDonald's and a Burger King at least twice a day and never get the urge to go in. Shwarma and falafel are just that good. I've heard prices at American chains here are higher than in the US, and portions are smaller. Rumor has it that a Subway footlong runs about 7JDs, which is about $10. American cravings bite the wallet. Let's go over that forty-cent falafel sandwich that I had Tuesday: pita wrap filled with falafel, hummus, vegetables, some kind of hot sauce, and French fries. And shwarma? Meat roasted on a spit (do an image search; I can't describe it) in a pita wrap, with onions, some other kind of vegetable, and some kind of sauce that makes me so happy I forget about other food entirely. For seventy cents.

I have three one-dinar bills right now, which makes me incredibly happy. Enough for cab fare home and a cheap lunch or some snacks at the convenience store - but I would probably use a five there, because it's always good to stock up on ones. Smart. Got my mind on my money and my money on my mind.