Just my luck...

I'll start with Thursday. Ken woke up not feeling well so he called in sick. Actually he still worked most of the day, but it was from home. Around 4pm we were feeling hungry so we drove down the hill and decided to try a famous falfel stand. Parking is kind of a bear down there so we thought we would just jump out, order and get back to the car. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. Once we were down there we must have forgotten about our get-in-get-out plan and were down there for a bit longer than planned. When we came back to the car we had a friendly note on our windshield kindly requesting 100 shekels for a parking violation. Uggh. We must have had our sadness written all over our faces because someone actually stopped to see if we needed help (doesn't happen often here). The man said if you buy a slip from the meter within 10 minutes of getting the ticket you can send it in with a letter and they will dismiss the ticket. Seems like a good idea to us, so we went up to the machine and purchased a slip. I stopped by the neighbors (Bears) that night and asked if they could explain the process better to me and they helped me type up a letter in Hebrew to send in with the ticket. Have I told you how wonderful and helpful our neighbors are? On Friday I took the letter and the ticket to the post office to send it registered mail. When I got there I found a parking spot and went to the meter to get a slip. Well, there was a min charge of 1.50 and guess what I had... a paper 20 and 1.40 in change. Hmmm what to do? The post office would close in 30 minutes. I asked a few people for any extra coins they might have but was unsuccessful, so I decided I am superfast I can just run inside send the letter and get out. Yep, dumb idea. It was important that the letter get sent today though. Inside the line took longer than it should have and you can probably guess the end of the story. While paying for one parking ticket, I got another one! What are the chances? We have been here 3 1/2 months and never seen the parking reinforced here in Israel. Apparently now that summer is over they are watching the parking closely. I actually did see the guy who gave me the ticket a few cars ahead and went and talked with him. He was very gracious and said he would recall this ticket but be sure to buy a ticket in the future. I've learned my lesson....