Parque Estadio Municipal - Part 1

Lest anyone think we have spent every waking hour unpacking and cleaning these last two weeks, we wanted to tell you about a recent outing we had exploring our surrounding neighborhood.

Just across the main boulevard from our villa is the Temuco City Park. We are very thankful for it's close proximity. The city park is huge, due to the fact it also has a large outdoor public swimming pool, tennis courts, soccer fields, and the Municipal Soccer Stadium.

Estadio Gérman Becker (German Becker Stadium) is were the Temuco professional soccer team plays. Pictures of inside the stadium HERE.

On game days, our whole neighborhood shuts down. Believe me, you can't get anywhere near the stadium. I found out the hard way on the first night Ben and I stayed at the house. We drove around for 45 minutes trying to get to the house, but kept running into police checkpoints and roadblocks. Finally after attempting to tell two policemen that I live in the area, I made it home via some back alleys.

It's funny to think back on it now...just imagine yourself being a policeman and someone drives up to you and (in incredibly pathetic Spanish) asks how to get home to his own house! From now on, we keep close tabs on what dates are game nights and plan to stay home on those event nights.

We have been enjoying some unusually warm weather for late March-early April (which are Fall months here in Chile). Temps have been in the mid-70's during the afternoon. We had promised the kids to take them to the park after we had unpacked all of the major things in the house. The other day, we capitalized on a wonderful warm afternoon and walked to the park.

The park was empty that day, due to the fact it was a school day. Only a few mothers with very small children were at the park. People were looking at us like we were a family from another planet...you know: being all blond, speaking English, kids NOT in school, a dad "not working" during work hours, and it not being tourist season for an American family to be on a vaction.

Besides the nice play areas for the children, the park has walking paths around the property. We plan to go back again this Fall as the weather allows. Next summer, we plan to use the swimming pool.

Come back for part 2 and pictures of the kids playing at the park.