Recession vs. Inflation

It's easy to get wrapped up in the money system here and forget the exchange rate. When I buy new flowered flats or something and spend 100 rand I feel like, gosh, that was really a splurge, I just spent and ENTIRE 100 rand. In retrospect, though, that is only 15 dollars. And I get all upset about having to pay a whole 50 rand for two movie tickets....but thats literally 7 dollars. In the US, that won't even get one person into the movies unless it is an 11 in the morning matinee. Seriously. We may be headed for recession, but the dollar is still dope in Africa (except of course for the Zimbabwean dollar...which is worth more as cigarette paper in which to smoke dope than its monetary value).

My Grandmother is here visiting from the great psuedo state of E-Wa. It's lovely having her and I am so impressed that she flew all the way to Cape Town alone. She is providing for much entertainment and is lengthening the list of her in-the-car moments of hilarity. Here's a recap of two old ones and the new one...

Frick funny moment in the car with Grandma #101:
Driving through Montana she is convinced that the Xhosa and Japanese cd's my sister and I are playing are Christian music, and she does not hesitate to throw in effusive "Hallelujah's". This becomes a problem when the praise chorus of J-Pop gets her into such a jubilant frenzy that she careens the wrong way down a one way street. Mojo and I escaped with our lives and have stopped playing non-english music on roadtrips with Grandma.

Frick funny moment in the car with Grandma #102:
Squished into the backseat with my sis and I, she drinks from a particularly crackly-sounding water bottle. My irritable father, thinking Mojo and I are purposely cracking something to annoy him and end our little family roadtrip, growls "Stop that cracking noise RIGHT NOW!" My grandmother gives us a big guilty shrug and stows her waterbottle in her bag for in-flight safety. But as she does the plastic crinkles again twice and my dad says "WHO IS DOING THAT!!!! I told you guys to stop! Stop that cracking or you are grounded." The fear in my Grandmother's eyes was palpable. Of course, my dad felt horribly guilty when he found out that it was actually my Grandmother who he was scolding.

Frick funny moment in the car with Grandma #103:
In the car with my cousin Darren, a fairly articulate freshman in high school, (i.e. he's colored and can speak and understand english very well, especially as it is his first and only language). My grandmother shares memories from the good old days and says "Well Darren I snore quite a bit, and when Mojo was little, she used to call it 'snorking'....Do you know what snoring means? Snoring is..." At this point my parents broke up the vocab lesson and explained that Darren was, in fact, fluent in English. My grandmother seemed relatively impressed. I would like to know, though, how at no point in the week she has spent with him did she not realize that he spoke english.