A little more shopping

Today I decided to be adventurous.  I still haven't been able to get a good handle what businesses sell based on looking at the outside of the buildings - they have a lot less windows than we do, and those that have windows have posters covering them.  Today I just decided, "Why not?" and started walking through doors.  What I found was a little strip mall type building, except each store was about the size of a flea market stall.  In case you're wondering - it's very difficult to ask questions and buy something when you don't speak the language!  I tried to buy some fabric for our display case at school, and with lots of pointing we figured out the price was 69 rubles.  Then I went to pay and found out that was the price for one (there were four total).  It took about 10 minutes to determine that I could buy just two instead of all four, and we completed the transaction.  About 5 minutes later she tracked me down in the mall, took my bag with lots of pointing, and we figured out that she'd only given me one instead of two.

Not only is language a challenge in shopping, but so is the currency.  Actually, the money is not as difficult to figure out as I thought it was going to be.  Their currency is all Rubles.  Their bills are larger quantities, and their coins are smaller.

Where it gets tricky is that the exchange rate is 30:1 US dollar.  So when I'm shopping, I find myself using the calculator on my phone a lot to figure out how much something would be to the currency I know.  75 Rubles seems astronomical to pay for a children's book, until I figured out it was just over $2 in the US!