Tuesday, September 24th - KD (Kuwait Dinar)

Another normal day at school. Not sure why I say normal as there doesn't seem to be too many of those! Jacqui had a meeting after school regarding her coming teacher evaluation (I'll get evaluated as well this fall). It's been a while since we went through this process. None of us are too worried about it! We went out for dinner; it had been two days since the last time we went out. We were almost overdue!

Being a quiet day (and a boring blog), it's time to learn a little more about Kuwait, more specifically about their currency. The Kuwaiti dinar (KD) is the currency of Kuwait. One KD is sub-divided into 1000 fils (instead of 100 cents like we have in Canada), so we sometimes pay 1.455 KD for something we buy. The KD is the highest-valued currency in the world. Currently, 1KD = 3.64 CAD. They have bills of different value and of different size and colour. The more they're worth, the larger the bill. They have bills of 50, 20, 10, 5, 1, ½ and ¼ KD (I'm sure they have larger bills as well, but I don't have that kind of budget, therefore haven't seen those yet). The value of each bill is written in english on one side and in arabic on the other side Their change is made up of coins having a value of 100, 50, 20 and 5 fils. Here again, the larger the value, the larger the coin. However, the difference in size is pretty small, so it is confusing - we still sometimes just open up our hand with change in it and let the cashier take what he needs! (personally, I don't have that problem as Jacqui always picks up all the change!!). It takes a while to get used to a new currency. You look at the price of something and think "Oh, it's not too expensive; it's only 4 KD". But when you start multiplying by 3.5 (the benchmark we use), it runs up to $14 in a hurry. We barter at the local markets (souks) and for taxi fares, even though most destinations we now go to have a set price (no meter running). Like canadian money, it's seems to flow more easily on the way out than on the way in. Must be a universal thing!