Simona’s Housing Map

This is where I lived for the first seven years of my life. It's a small town outside of the capital of Moldova, called Durlești. Although close to the most major city in the country, we were still pretty rural with plenty of livestock and grew all of our fruits and vegetables. I grew up in the house my parents built, it was right next to my grandmothers house and my aunt's.

Since it was such a small town, everyone knew everyone so as a child I would always go unsupervised. This led to most of my childhood consisting of my cousin and I consistently getting into trouble and rarely being inside.

When we first moved to America, we stayed with family friends for a while. They owned their own house, with a huge backyard and three dogs. It was in Cortlant Manor, Westchester NY.

This is where I got enrolled into the public school system, and luckily and unintentionally it was a pretty good district. My elementary school even had an ESL program, although mainly for Spanish speakers, it was the only reason I passed elementary school.

This is where my family moved after we left our family friends. My parents felt ready to have their own space, not not ready enough to buy, so they rented a house 10 minutes away from our old location. It was in Crompond NY, still in Westchester. My parents chose this location because it was in the same school district as my sister and I started to attend and my sister wouldn't have to switch high school. It was very much a suburban town, with some people even having the white-picket fence.

The house was pretty spacious, with three bedrooms everyone had their own space. And when my sister moved to college, we had even more space that slowly got turned into a hording situation. It also had a large front yard, where we'd spend a lot of summer days.

My parents lived here for 10 years, and decided to move and own their own house about a year after I moved out. After 10 years of consideration, they decided to purchase a house about 5 minutes away(right outside the school district border).

This is where I live now, in a small two-bedroom apartment that I got along with my sister when I first moved to college. It's located in Harlem, NY. We chose this location because it was one of a few areas the two of us could afford, and it is between a dance studio and a police station so we thought it would be relatively safe and populated.

Although my sister wants to move to a more hip location, I like this area because it's not as crowded as lower Manhattan but we are still about 20 minutes away from the center of the city. It is also walking distance to both Columbia and the Harlem River. I, however, would consider moving to avoid the five flights of stairs that comes along with this apartment.