Our Journey Around the World – New Hampshire, USA

Our Journey Around the World: Part 8 – New Hampshire, New England

WOOHOO! Our first time heading down to the States for an EAL School and we are PUMPED!  We flew into Boston and true to Kari and Carolyn style, followed the GPS and got lost. But with one quick turn around we continued on our merry little way. What a gorgeous drive. As we got out of the city and into the country the landscape just got more beautiful.

As the light of the day dimmed we finally pulled into our B&B to meet one of the highlights of our trip! We stayed at the Birchwood Inn in Temple New Hampshire! A perfect place for us with our own separate space, a gorgeous little restaurant and even a little pub all located within the eclectic place. However, the owners were the best part! Andrew Cook and Nick Finnis were not only the most charismatic people that we may have ever met in our lives, but also the most parental! There was ZERO chance of us leaving for our day without eating breakfast, and ensuring that we always had a lovely lunch and dinner as well. Breakfast was on the table and we were expected to be there or Andrew would ensure that we knew that we were late! This was of course done in a way that was absolutely hilarious and the two kept us in stitches with there phenomenal humour! Plus, it was pretty easy to come in for breakfast (even though neither of us are usually very good at eating breakfast) because the food was AMAZING! Every meal we had there was prepared by Andrew and we were never EVER disappointed. The man can COOK! All in all, the stay was more than we could have ever hoped for. If any of you have the chance to stay at the Birchwood we would HIGHLY recommend it!

Now lets talk about Villi Poni Farm. What a magical place with amazing horses! Our host Emily made it easy to run the course there for sure! Plus! They had a couple of donkeys, but none like we had ever seen! They were so adorable we just wanted to hug them all day and night! The team of participants that we had were great! All different personalities from different places, but all there to learn how to bring EAL to the world.  

So when we are at home, we have this odd thing that we like to call our horses, “ponies.” We realize this isn’t accurate however we just do it. Kind of like how all of our horses have nick names. Now Villi Poni Farms has all Newfoundland Ponies at their location, so you would think that this is great! We will now be accurate in our wording. NOPE! We called all of them horses!   Apparently our minds just work in a different sort of way!

After the course we thought that since we had a little time maybe we should drive into Salem.  Again, the GPS failed us and took us in the worst round about way with the most traffic. In life, Carolyn possesses the patience of a saint – that is until you put her in traffic. Then there is zero patience to be found and frustration takes over. The trip to Salem was long and backed up and took a lot of creating exercises to get her through it.

Salem was very cool, but only having an hour there after the traffic jam, we were soon well on our way back into Boston. This time the GPS pulled through and we arrived just in time for our flight!

New Hampshire and Boston were amazing places and more beautiful that we could have imagined!