Socializing and fences

Besides the Bar Mitzvah scene, our family has been invited to a few peoples' houses so far.  A family friend of Rob's from Buenos Aires has lived here for a few years with her husband and two kids.  They live in Lo Barnechea which is an extremely high-end suburb.  We went there the second weekend we were here as well as a Sunday for tea when the mother of the friend was in town from Buenos Aires.  It is way up in the hills in a lovely area.  We have also been invited to a colleague of Rob´s house a few blocks from where we live.  It is a more ¨"down-to-earth" neighborhood although it is a few houses down from the Palestinian Embassy!

What is interesting is that no matter where people live they have tall fences and gates around their houses even in the less well-off neighborhoods that I have walked through.  Many even have barbed wire.  Although there is apparently a lot of crime here it appears that the high fences are more of a cultural thing because at least in our neighborhood everybody also has alarm systems.  The nice part is that you can just open your doors throughout the house and not worry about it but the odd part is that you don't know what is happening down the block.  In our neighborhood there are a few parks where kids run around but I don't know how much running around happens behind the tall gates although I have notices many a wet doggie nose peering through small wholes ;-)

I took a walk this afternoon in our neighborhood and took pictures of a few examples: