Parking

I never realized how orderly we were with parking our cars in the States.  Here, anything seems to go with respect to parking except in malls.  I hypothesize that this has happened because streets and buildings were built before many people had cars so they didn't really think about the need for parking but perhaps it is just the custom here.  In some of the high-end malls and clinics they have a cool system to tell you where there is an available parking spot.  Once a car pulls into a spot a green light that is above the entrance to the spot turns red.  There is then a sign at the top of the entrance to the aisle that indicates how many free spots are available down that row.  Pretty cool system.

At least in our neighborhood there is not a lot of grass and most of the grass is sometimes used for parking.  Because of this and the lack of precipitation the grass doesn't seem to grow much.  In the places where it has grown I have seen people outside with scissors cutting the grass.  I have this image of our friends with the ride-on mowers out there with their kitchen shears.  Different world ;-)  Here is a collection of parking spots in our neighborhood and near Instituto Hebreo:

One reason that grass will never grow much here

Guess the barriers didn't stop this car!

I assume that this was grass at some point but now it is parking for school pick-up near Instituto Hebreo - I am as guilty as the next person - our car is the white one almost all the way to the left

At least it won't get hit by other cars?

This is pretty typical - just hedging against getting side-swiped