Being young and in love helped because living with very limited resources is far from easy. We worked our butts off but we still managed to weave delightful memories along the way, ones to be treasured and cherished when we're old, grey & shaking every bone.
Even if Henniker is a small town by any standard, it still had a lot to offer a young married couple from Malaysia. Natural wonders abound. To start with, having 4 seasons in a year was already a novelty in itself. Fall is breathtaking in New England and I remember being extremely excited over our first winter - being the sun worshippers that we were lol. In fact, we didn’t just hang about waiting for the snow to come to us, we went out searching for it instead !!
Snow in White Mountain...
Compared to Henniker, snow comes earlier to the White Mountains, a majestically beautiful mountain range and a tourist attraction no matter what the season. Not having our own set of wheels, the hubby borrowed a friend’s car and off we went in search of the fascinating yet elusive, white snow. Little did we know that before long we would be having more snow then we‘d ever bargained for lol.
Goofing outside our apartment building..
Less than 15 minutes away (or was it 20?) is Henniker’s very own answer to skiing – Pat’s Peak. Its an exhilarating sport but rather embarrassing as well… at least for me. There I was, struggling madly to stay on my feet (skiing gracefully was but a distant dream) and what do I see around me? Kids barely out of the kindergarten whizzing merrily about me without a care in the world!!! Well, I never did get beyond the beginner’s slope lol.
Skiing At Pats Peak..
In the way of groceries and halal food, we had to venture further out bcos Henniker’s stores were pretty limited to bread, butter, milk, eggs and stuff like that… certainly nothing even mildly exotic like Kikkoman soy sauce for example. Oh and it was while we were in the states that we actually realized there was such a thing as non-halal bread!! Buns, pies and cakes we were careful of but somehow the regular white/wholemeal bread was something we just took for granted and never once considered reading the labels. Not until one day when I did just that while trying to compare prices between the many brands. And to my absolute surprise and horror, there was lard listed in a few of them!! That incident really taught us to be a lot more careful & selective of what we bought.
Apples in Hillboro...
Groceries in Concord..
There was plenty of seafood supply in nearby Hillsboro or Concord (a little further away) but for halal chicken and beef, it had to be from Boston. Theres a bunch of pakis & iranian butchers supplying halal meat to the muslims there. Its a long trip so we made our way down to Boston only once or twice a month and sometimes took turns in getting supplies for everyone. Our little community kept growing bcos apart from New England college there was also University Of New Hampshire in Manchester.
Sights & sounds of Boston, MASS..
It was during the summers that there were plenty of work to be found, probably bcos everyone else was away enjoying some sort of vacation or other. The hubby first started working at the college cafeteria but he's also tried his hand at being a cleaner, gardener, caretaker, pizza maker, driver and probably the most challenging one of all - a well paying job clearing out dry chicken poop at a nearby farm!! the poor darling, i hardly recognized him the first time he came home.. he was covered from head to toe with what looked like yellowish dust (but i found out real quick what it actually was lol).
But we didn’t work throughout the whole summer months. of course we gave the local parks a run for their money.. the weather was just too good to waste and the rides were fun enough :)
Summer fun..
We also had enough saved to do a little traveling of our own. Probably not as far away & exciting as Disney World, Florida (where most of our friends had gone) but just enough to keep the wanderlust in check. all in all, we did manage 2 grand trips on top of the smaller excursions:
1. The Ohio Trip – another couple wanted to visit a cousin in Athens, Ohio and was looking for interested parties to tag along and share the expenses. We just jumped at the chance lol.
2. The Great Lakes Adventure – a bunch of us pooled together all our resources for the trip of our lives. Across the southern-most part of Canada, into Michigan and along part of the great lakes and back. It was a hard long ride but we did it.
Of course I’ll elaborate when I finally get to it :)
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