The Money Situation

(Kasey here)

The money situation here is, to say the least, stupid. We started off with $100, which was 404 NIS (shekels). That was gone after we bought some basic groceries and went to the Old City and whatnot.

When we were pestering Ross about when Heather was showing up, we also pestered him about getting paid. His response was “Sure, sure, we can work out whatever you want…” and then he walked away. Literally when we were mid-sentence trying to actually GET the money from him.

We ran out of food roughly last Sunday and I started trying to hunt Ross down. I didn’t find him until Thursday, first thing. I ran up to him and asked about getting paid. He mumbled half-sentences about how we would work things out, and then promised there would be money for me sometime that day, and then… he ran away.

I tried to find him at every available opportunity. If I had a couple minutes off, I would run downstairs to remind him. He either couldn’t be found or saw me waiting to talk to him and walked the other way. Whether he means to do this or not is yet to be seen.

At the end of the day, we had that giant meeting that I mentioned way down there. I found him before the meeting and he went “Ah! I’ll work that out.” But then the meeting started. So I stayed glued to him until the meeting ended and then I asked for the money again. He said to go see if Ms. Maha was still around. I did so quickly so that he didn’t have a chance to escape. Ms. Maha was no longer there. So I hurried back and found Ross about to close the door for another meeting.

I walked right up to him while the meeting was about to start, and said, “Ross, Ms. Maha went home. How can I get my money right now?”

So he pulls roughly 7000 NIS out of his pocket and hands me 1000, which is about $250. I’m supposed to get $800, but… I figure half of that is rent and the rest… apparently I cannot have it?

Now’s a time for me to not be passive.

So that evening we went grocery shopping. When I say we had no food for those 4 days, we literally were eating peanut butter and hummus and crackers. Every day. For every meal. And we were almost out of peanut butter. One night all three of us were craving anything different so badly that we brought out the tictacs and the gum. Not even exaggerating. It was like we'd found some delicacies.

I can't tell you how cool it is to have more than peanut butter in the house.