I don't know why, but whenever I live somewhere for more than a couple of months, a group will emerge to play Monopoly with me. How cool is that? Back at home, at summer camp, in Columbus, when I lived in DC with a bunch of student interns, there's always a group such as these that will be willing to argue endlessly over the outcome of a property trade. It's practically been the greatest conceivable board game since 1934 (with the possible exception of Settlers of Catan, of which I'd have to play more to better judge the two).
Well, since our good friends on the other side of the base left the theater of operations, and us with no regular movie night on Saturdays, there's been nothing notable to do on a Saturday night here. This was until last week when I made the executive decision to force a couple of friends to play Monopoly with me. Everyone had a great time and the experience was repeated with more participants last night.
I totally won. Andrea (on the left) won last week.
Finding things to write about when my days are mostly filled with work at the Education Center is proving a bit harder than I expected. I mean there are plenty of little things to write about, but it's not like I'm having life-changing experiences on a day-to-day basis. Instead I'll write some posts about the little things.
Let's talk about the money here. Have I made it clear yet, that this is a NATO base with mostly Americans, but there are plenty of people from lots of other places? Yeah. French, British, Australia, Canadian, and various contingents from a smattering of other countries all coexist on this one base. Many of these contingents have their own stores, DFACs (Dining Facilities), living quarters, etc.
As far as I can tell American money is the way to go here. I haven't been to a PX (Post Exchange - it's basically just army for: "store that the army sets up on a base") that lists prices in any other currency. The Kandahar American PX is relatively large for Afghanistan for good reason as this is a very large base. That's if you compare it to other PXs - in Germany we were at one that was literally the size of a Walmart or a Target.
Anyway, the PX is normally pretty busy. I hear they're the only place on the base that accepts $100 dollar bills which is ironic because the only ATMs available here dispense only $100 bills. They also accept Eagle Cash which is sort of a debit card for the army.
When you are owed change from the PX checkout that is not in denominations of just whole dollars (nearly every time you check out), you aren't given it in coins. Instead, AAFES (Army and Air Force Exchange System) came up with a different solution for Iraq and Afghanistan PXs. What we get are pogs. Remember pogs? Little cardboard coin-shaped collectibles? Fad from the mid-90s? I've got about 500 of them sitting in a drawer in my bedroom in Cleveland? Ringing any bells? There's even a webpage of the different series of AAFES pogs issues over the last 10 years on this numismatics website.
Here's what they look like
If feels a lot like paying for things with monopoly money - or at least I imagine it will, I've been saving them up for a big purchase. So far I've got about enough to buy an Arizona Iced Tea - still only 99¢!!! They don't even bother with pennies and just round up or down. Yesterday they gave me an actual quarter and I was confused... looks like I've acclimated a bit.
Excuse me, may I please pay for my new Nintendo DS with this orange 500?
If I had the old pog-maker I got for Channukah at age 9 or so, I'd have a pretty sweet counterfeiting racket going on here.
