My cousin Melanie lives in a small area outside the city of Hartford and this area was consider a condominium. Yup, her house and like many grey houses in the area are condominium.

She explained that everything inside the house belongs to her, while everything outside the house (the shrubs and and infrastructure) belongs to the condominium management.

The entire house is made of wood!

It is really exactly how the television showed.

House made of wood, rooms where furnished totally with carpet floors, and they walk around the house with their shoes on!

I am not a small or regular size girl, so when I climbed up and down the stairs and walked along the upstairs floor, I can hear the floors creak beneath me. Trust me, I don’t even dare to jump around the house, just tread lightly.

She’s quite sensitive about me taking pictures in her house as she felt was an intrusion on her privacy, so I respected her, but I couldn’t help but take this picture of her little garden by her kitchen sink.

While my cousin lives in a “condominium”( I just can’t grasp the idea), my aunt Nancy stays a stone throw away from my cousin’s house (yes, they don’t live together) in an apartment.

This building above looks like a huge two-storey house, yet it is separated into many apartments. My aunt lives on the first floor. (By estimation, 2 windows = one apartment sector)

I took this above picture on the way to Darren’s Mum’s house. Darren’s is my cousin’s long-time boyfriend and we were going there to celebrate Easter.

This picture actually brought me back to this particular memory that my cousin gave me.

She commented how wrong it was for me to say that “Singapore has a lot of trees”, when she came to Singapore to visit. I was proud to announce Singapore as ‘THE Garden City’ and yet she wasn’t amused by what I said. 

That was when I was 10 years old.

And I only travelled as far as Penang, Malaysia.

It was then in her car I saw how small my world was.

In Connecticut, the trees stood endlessly by the side of the road; witnessing their majestic presence as they were rooted in place for many years. The peaceful silence of the road gave me a wake up call on understanding perspective.

This is one story I told countless times to many people when I want them to take on a different perspective on things. I will elaborate more about this contrast; this revelation, when I talk about New York later.

We have reached this cute little house typical in the American society.

This is Darren’s mum’s house.

Nice right?

K, allow me to show you their backyard.

It is H-U-G-E!! They just live at the edge of the forest, so the entire land, with the pond (yes, that is a POND) is theirs. They were planning to spift up the place a little, so they can lay out some picnic tables and lounge chairs out there near the water edge.

Let me give you a perspective of how big this place is.

This above picture is taken halfway to the pond. Yes, HALFWAY.

You can compare the tree on the right in this above picture and the tree on the left in the previous picture.

You can now gauge how big the field is.

They even have a container truck (yup, the PSA container kind) parked at the side of the house.

(Didn’t manage to take a picture of that) that they kept their 4×4 vehicles with.

The kids take those 4x4s all over the field.

That is freaking fun!

Wow~

It was Spring when I was there, so the country was starting to sprout and bloom~

A selca picture of myself on my way to Aunt Nancy’s place..

More stories of my trip to come, stay tuned!

xoxo