Tuition

Being an American student in Canada can be hard for some reasons that may not seem appartent at first. Beyond the constant jabs at my country's leader and frequent remarks about American stereotypes I have to deal with my tuition. Being a foreigner, I pay more than twice as much as other students in the same classes which means that my tuition this semester cost me $ 6,883.69 CAD. Of course, now that the tuition cap has been eliminated by the province of Alberta the student's union has been holding feeble protests against a 5.5% rise in tuition. How would they feel about a 125% rise? The stressful part of this is not the actual amount that I'm paying for tuition. In fact, this is still a bit less that I would pay at a comparable university in California as a local. The stressful part is deciding when to pay my tuition. Currency exchange rates have not been in my favor. The U.S. economy has been abismal practically since Bush took office. As a result, the value of the U.S. dollar has plumeted. When I first came to Canada, the Canadian dollar traded for 65 cents U.S. Now it is trading at 77 cents U.S. This means that on approximately $10,000 CAD in tuition for one year, I have lost an equivalent of $1,200 US just by inflation. For a student with no income this is a HUGE chunk of change. In September the Canadian dollar was at practically a 20 year high of 75 cents on the US dollar. I thought that this was too high and that the canadian dollar would be affected the US and would eventually depreciate in value. As a result I only paid $6000 of my tuition (just a little more than the first semester's total) hoping that the CAD would fall in time for me to pay the next semester. But instead the CAD continued to rise reaching recently over 78 cents. Since I only have until January 30 to pay this semester's tuition, I was feeling the pressure to get the lowest possible exchange rate in a short period of time. As a result, when the canadian dollar dropped just a little, back down to 76.9 I resolved to pay. Hoping that it would continue to drop I waited a day to see how the Canadian dollar was going. When I went back up to 77.07 I felt that this was a bad trend and paid my tuition on the spot.
Of course, not 2 hours later, my room mate Joel informs me that the Bank of Canada will deciding next week whether or not to drop interest rates in order to inflate the Canadian dollar. If they don't the CAD may continue to soar up to 90 cents, but if they do ( which I feel is more likely) then dollar will plumet and make me kick my self in the pants for paying too early.