I’ve been meaning to write a post about money in Argentina for awhile but things keep getting in the way. And then about a week and a half ago I had an unpleasant experience that wiped everything else from my mind–I remembered that I’m actually in school. I know, I know, I thought I was just here to ride my bike and try to figure out the bus system (which by the way IS a full time job). But no, academics poked up its ugly head and tried to ruin my carefree Argentina existence. But, don’t worry, now that I’ve crammed half of a semester’s worth of work into five days and survived my first set of parciales, I can go back to getting on the wrong busses and writing the occasional blog post. Phew. I know you’re all relieved.

And so, money in Argentina. Sometimes it’s hard to buy things here. Why? Because no one ever, ever, ever, EVER has change. This has something to do with the government taking money out of circulation in an attempt to stop the peso in its spiral of devaluation doom. Something like that, but I’m not an economist. The point of this is that if all you have is a 100 peso note (~$25)…sorry ’bout it, nobody wants your dough.

Feel free to try. You’ll be met with sighs of exasperation and eye rolls and questions of “¿no tenés algo más chico?” or “¿un pesito tendrás?” Answer no and there’s a decent chance you’ll be sent packing without whatever it is you were so naively trying to buy. If you rack up a bill of, say, $61.17, you will first be asked if you have 2 pesos so the cashier can give you two twenties and not have to part with any sacred small bills. Refuse this and you will be asked to donate your 83 centavos to the firefighters or the children’s hospital or insert-random-charity-here. I have my doubts as to whether my centavos make it the bomberos or not but seeing as that’s less than a nickel, how can I refuse? And besides, if it’s save some poor sap from counting to 83 then I’m all for it.

Or so I’ve convinced myself. And over the past three months I have made an effort to pay in small bills, count out monedas and apologize profusely if I ever pay with anything larger than a 20. Macky and I even tried not to get too annoyed when gas station attendants overfilled our gas tank just to get the amount to an even number. But just a few days ago a friend and I tried to take a taxi. Actually we did take a taxi and then when we got to our final destination and then realized we both only had 100s. Naturally the taxista had no change. It was Sunday morning so no kiosks could change our bill (assuming they had small bills in the first place). Luckily, the friend we were visiting was willing to pay up…

This was when I realized that this DRIVES ME NUTS. It must be my overblown United States of American ego, but I don’t want to spend 20 minutes trying to change a bill. I want my change. I want my 83 cents. All I want to know is, WHERE MY MONEY AT?

I’m not sure what this says about me but for the moment I’m just going to file it under interesting-insight-into-my-cultural-entitlement and leave it at that.