Delft Mama’s own “Legal Mom,” Marisa Monteiro Borsboom, will be leading the “Legal Mom” column for the Delft Mama Blog. In this column, she and her team will address questions submitted from the community about personal or business legal issues. As an extremely diverse multinational/cultural community, we should expect to see very interesting topics for everyone to consider.
On Friday, 8 March, Karen Heijman passed away suddenly. She has been a valuable part of Delft Mama and has touched the lives of many of our members. Read on as Delft Mama Julia Candy shares a sweet memorial in honor of her close friend Karen. Tarja Van Veldhoven also wrote a lovely Delft Mama of the Week blog post about Karen in 2016, which you can find here. Elizabeth Newcamp prepared a video for Karen’s funeral service, which you can view here.
Karen, you and your loved ones are in our thoughts and hearts.
Renny Wiegerink of Auryn Acupunctuur en Advies voor vrouwen
Renny Wiegerink works with Dutch and expat women in her business, Auryn Acupunctuur en Advies voor vrouwen (Acupuncture and Advice for Women), which is based out of her home in Delft Noord. From the eastern part of the Netherlands, she moved to Delft 25 years ago. She knows how it feels to have to move around in a strange place/culture. A long-time collaborator with Delft MaMa, Renny values being able to share her experience and knowledge as a native Dutch person with expats. When planning the Delftian Entrepreneurs Series for the DMM blog, I knew I wanted to start with Renny. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and join us!Read More »Delftian Entrepreneur: Renny Wiegerink
Almost a half of all Dutch households own at least one pet. There are more than 2.5 million cats, and over 1.6 million dogs. Hamsters, bunnies, guinea pigs are very popular too. So how do you go about getting a pet? And once you find him, or her, what do you actually do? Do you buy or adopt? How do you make sure they stay healthy, well fed and safe? What do you do if they wander away?
Read More »Expanding the family… a little differently this time
It’s that time of year again; time for expressing your love whether it’s towards a partner, a parent, a child or a friend (and yes, for some, that extends to four-legged ones). After all, most of us love someone or something.
Read More »What Brought us to Love: Results of Our “How We Met” Survey
When brainstorming blog post topics related to living in Delft, Delft Mama Xenia Gabriel and I quickly realized that there are so many aspects of the housing situation in Delft (and the Netherlands) that one post clearly wasn’t going to be enough. Xenia’s post in October provided the start of the housing series, giving an overview of finding a home as an expat family in Delft. In order to get a sense of more experiences of the Delft Mama community, I set up a very short poll for people to respond to. Read on as I summarize the results of the housing poll.
Read More »Making your home in Delft: the results of the housing poll
The Delft Mama Blog is growing! We are currently looking for fresh, local voices who are passionate about Delft and interested in sharing their stories. This is a volunteer role, but there are some really fun perks to make it all worthwhile. Here’s what you need to know…Read More »Join the 2019 Delft Mama Blog Team!
Delft MaMa wishes you all a Happy New Year 2019! As we close the old year, it’s always good to look back and reflect, to be able to continue to build on past successes and work on our weaknesses. For the first post of 2019, we asked DMM Chairwoman Marie Kummerlowe to give a year in review of Delft MaMa in 2018 and what we hope to expect going forward in 2019. It’s a long post, so grab your favorite beverage and get yourselves comfortable. Happy reading!Read More »Out with the old, in with the new… Welcoming the New Year with Delft MaMa
In 2007, Lucie Cunningham set out with an idea to start Delft MaMa. She never imagined the impact it would have on the community and countless lives over the years. We sat down with Lucie, Delft Mama’s founder, to learn more about her personal story, how it all got started and how things have evolved.Read More »A conversation with Delft MaMa’s founder
As we transport ourselves to new places, it can be easy for us to lose sight of our roots. In this story, however, Delft MaMa Maya Levi, originally from Israel, shares with us her journey of reconnecting with her Jewish cultural-religious identity as she settled in the Netherlands. In parallel, Maya describes the Jewish festival of Chanukah as a powerful festival of conscious reconnection with religious roots.
Read More »Chanukah: connecting with my cultural-religious identity
As most children in the Netherlands prepare to celebrate the period of Sinterklaas, some of us expats can be left overwhelmed with this uniquely Dutch tradition, without understanding the history behind it. Some aspects might be shocking (blackface), others might be endearing (leaving carrots in shoes for Sint’s horse). Join us as Delft MaMa Anitha Raj, hailing from India, shares a little background on Sinterklaas followed by her observations of this annual tradition.
Guest Post by Nina Bogerd and Maya Levi Although she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) fifteen years ago, Maya Levi has never let it… Read More »Maya Levi: Determined not to let life be defined by MS
by Julia Candy
Delft, like most cities across the Netherlands, plays its part in settling an increasing number of refugees seeking asylum from dangerous situations. To learn how the Delft MaMa community might better reach this group of families, I spoke to Delft-based refugees and a volunteer for the refugee-focused charity DelftseBuur to better understand the story of asylum seekers in Delft.Read More »Refugees in Delft: Getting to know our neighbors
by Natalia Moreno The Origins of Halloween Although Halloween celebrations are very popular in The United States, its origin comes far from the American continent.… Read More »Halloween: From spooky origins to family fun
“Moving to a new country is always an adventure. Choosing the right home for a family makes it even more exciting, but sometimes also more complicated.” Delft MaMa Xenia Gabriel starts off our new blog series with some tips based on her family’s experiences finding their home in Delft.
NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
Initiated over 2 years ago, the Delft Mama blog has delivered numerous creative, heartwarming contributions throughout the years. Looking back at those earlier posts — in our role as current editors — we realized there were quite a few that we missed. Surely we aren’t the only ones, especially with new members joining Delft Mama each year. With that in mind, we decided to take a look back a couple times each year to recall one of those “Oldies but Goodies”.
Here’s the first installment, a rather recognizable, yet shocking and frankly funny post that speaks to the core of one of Delft Mama’s missions — to help build networks and provide support that makes families (and families-to-be) feel at home here in Delft.
by Amanda de Souza, with Onica King
One of the enduring memories I have of childhood are birthday parties, the ones my mother held for my brother and I. She was a born extrovert and revelled in entertaining children. She would come to life during those parties, jettisoning daily cares for a few hours and casting everyone in her magical spell.Read More »Birthday Party Resources in and Around Delft
In See you at DULI, we met easy-going Carolina Nesi of DULI, a place where you can find international/multilingual books for children and adults, as… Read More »Parents’ Evenings at DULI
