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Delft Mama of the week: Shadi

Having lived in Delft only for a few months makes our mom of the week, Shadi, one of our newest members. She’s a mother of two boys: Parsa who is 12 and a 6-year-old Samia. Funnily enough, having been a part of an expat family ever since he was only a few months old makes the youngest member of the family also the most experienced.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Shadi

Delft Mama of the week: Oriana

After the fall of the Berlin wall at the brink of her teenage years, Oriana and her parents moved to the Netherlands. Things weren’t changing in their native land of Romania as much as they had hoped and the family decided to look to the west for future. Before settling in Delft Oriana moved around the country from Drenthe to Limburg and from Nijmegen to Amsterdam. Now Oriana lives in the center with her husband Wim and their 12-year-old daughter Maud.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Oriana

Delft Mama of the week: Maya

Ten years ago our mom of the week, Maya, met her Dutch husband Erwin. Now they are parents of a six-year-old Naama and Boaz who just turned four. Maya grew up in Israel, studied and did the obligatory military service there before moving abroad. She was familiar with the Netherlands before meeting her husband, but never thought she’d be living in Holland – but as faith would often have it, it’s exactly where she ended up. Just like most expats, being far from extended family has taught Maya other ways of having a safety net around her, and she feels Delft MaMa is now her family, too. “For me Delft MaMa is one of the strongest attraction points of Delft. For all of us who don’t have a family here, this group of wonderful people is it”, Maya declares.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Maya

Delft Mama of the week: Sandra

Delft MaMa of the week, Sandra

Sandra and her husband Nicola met over seven years ago when they were both fresh international students at the TU Delft. With a background in Computer Science, she made her masters in Management of Technology and is currently fully embracing motherhood with their three-year-old son Gerardo and a nine-month-old daughter Minerva. Sandra joined the Delft MaMa community when Gerardo was about half a year old but she wishes she had joined earlier. “The first few months of being a mom were really overwhelming. All the time I saw mothers on the streets with ‘omas’ around and thought I couldn’t have that being away from both families. When I joined Delft MaMa it made things easier”, Sandra says. The community made her feel welcome, but it also helped to get to know individual mothers who previously had been in the same exact position. Once she met with mothers who have gone through different phases with their children, it dissipated Sandra’s fears. She tells how her sister is about to become a mother for the second time in a city of five million people, but hasn’t managed to find a community of mothers where she would feel like home. “With DMM community you are sure you share the fact that you are an expat and you are raising children here, or maybe you are Dutch, but you are raising your children in an international way. It makes it easier for you to find people with the same ideals and goals”, Sandra joyfully says.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Sandra

Delft Mama of the week: Manuela

Manuela and her family

Whenever I interview moms of the week, I ask them to nominate one or more mothers to feature in the future. This time I was going to meet with one of those mothers who has been recommended to me over and over again. Manuela is well known among Delft Mamas, not least because of her collaborations with other mothers for work. She’s a mother of three girls: a six-year-old Sophia, Mireya who is almost five and a three-year-old Elodie. When she moved to Delft in 2010, she knew from her several previous moves that she needed to find a community around her the sooner the better, and she was referred to Delft MaMa where she instantly found her place.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Manuela

Delft Mama of the week: Renée

Renée and her two girls

It was a chilly Tuesday morning that was going to turn into a warm afternoon. I met our mom of the week, Renée, at café Kek in the center of Delft right after she had dropped her daughters Sophia (9) and Isabella (7) off to school. She was cycling from Ypenburg, which by land belongs to The Hague, but the phone numbers were the familiar 015 of Delft. If she could have, Renée would have bought a house that was built half in Delft and half in The Hague. Ypenburg was the closest compromise. Luckily for her, the day was going to be a warm day (warm for Dutch September). Renée wasn’t quite ready to give up her feeling of summer just yet, after having spent the entire holiday in Australia with her girls.
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Delft Mama of the week: Caroline

Our mom of the week, Caroline, invited me to her house for coffee. She was raised by a Colombian mother, so it was an invitation I absolutely had to accept. The smell of freshly baked something good hit me when I stepped in the hallway of her lovely home. Her children, Isabella (3) and Jack (8 months) were playing in the living room under a skylight while she prepared their treats – and mine.

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Delft Mama of the week: Lucie

Even though our Delft Mama of the week, Lucie, has a BA in English as a second language and she did a master’s in English in women studies, she never dreamed of setting up an international network of moms until she did just that. Our mom of the week is the mother of a 12-year-old Loic, but she is also the founding mother of Delft MaMa. Now nine years, awards and countless nominations later, the group Lucie set up has expanded from twenty moms to several hundreds of parents and her legacy is living stronger than she had ever imagined.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Lucie

Delft Mama of the week: Agnès

Delft Mama of the week, Agnès, is for the second time on the blog spotlight after her love story with her partner was published last April. Their son, Max, was born in Delft, but Agnès believes that motherhood would have changed her tempo even if they lived somewhere else. “I’m going at half a speed of what I used to. I used to be always on schedule, because I was working and I had an extensive social life in Barcelona where I come from. I had my family there, so most Sundays we had the Sunday roast at my grandparents place. I was always squeezing a lot of things to one. When we moved to Delft, suddenly I had an empty diary. I have been able to fill that agenda with different stuff of my interest, like the Indian Film Festival in the Hague that I am going to take part in the coordination of. But I’m also taking less commitments. I do like to have a slower tempo.”Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Agnès

Delft Mama of the week: Carolina

If you don’t bump into Carolina enjoying the tranquil streets of Delft, you might just see her enjoying her day in Café de Bonte Haas in Wateringen, as she lists the area around Den Hoorn as one of her favorites. She has felt the same way every since she first visited the Netherlands after she started dating a Dutch man who was working with a temporary contract in her hometown of Córdoba, Argentina.Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Carolina

Delft Mama of the week: Karen

Born in the States and raised in California, our mom of the week, Karen, is a mother of a nearly 4-year-old Isabelle and a wife to Dutch Michel. To reduce paperwork and for the feeling of security, Karen has a dual citizenship after becoming Dutch last year. “I don’t feel any different though. I have a new passport now and luckily I didn’t have to give up my American passport. I’m Dutch these days, but it feels like it’s just on paper; it doesn’t seem real. It feels like no one’s ever going to consider me Dutch and I’m okay with that. If I get to the point that I speak Dutch 24/7, people might consider me Dutch, but at the same time I don’t think that’ll ever happen. I need to hold onto that little bit of me that comes with the language. It’s so important. Your language is a part of who you are. I speak Dutch everywhere I go, except at home.”

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Delft Mama of the week: Rachelle

I asked to meet with Rachelle, because we have known each other for a year and a half, thanks to playgroup, and because she has been writing the most interesting things on Facebook lately. Recently Rachelle went on a retreat for the second time and came back updating her status about all the things that make her happy. To me it seemed as if she was undergoing what I called “a happiness challenge”, but instead of only talking about happiness, we had a long interview during which she talked openly about her personal grief, growth and depression. Listening to her wisdom, I realized seeing the happiness posts on Facebook were her yang, but it all came from her yin. “That’s the thing about depressions that people don’t realize: when you’re depressed, you usually stay at home and the days you feel better, you go outside. Nobody knows there’s something going on underneath the surface. People just don’t see it. I’ve been very open about this, because I think people should be more open about depression.”Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Rachelle

Delft Mama of the week: Miriam

 

Delft Mama of the week, Miriam, is highly involved in various children’s activities in the city. She has been attending the playgroup on a weekly basis with her daughter Freddy (3) from the first week they arrived in Delft two years ago. During the spring, Miriam and her husband Nathan, volunteered to work with the refugees through Welkoms Maaltijd and have enjoyed it immensely. “I care passionately about the refugees and I really want to be able to do something with them. With DMM I had an opportunity to start: the previous coordinator was moving away and she was looking for someone to take on the role. I thought it was a great opportunity. My experience working in charities and in management in general, my interest in this area, and also having lived in countries that weren’t my home, all give me a tiny bit of an insight into what people might need when arriving in a foreign country. The Welkoms Maaltijd format might change after the summer break, but I do hope we will be able to keep it going in some way, and I can continue contributing in the future.”Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Miriam

Delft Mama of the week: Zsófia

Delft Mama of the week, Zsófia, is a mother of two little girls, Johannah (5) and Annabel (3). Zsófia met her husband while on holiday and after a couple of years of long-distance relationship, they decided to move to the Netherlands where he was studying at the time. “Initially, I felt bewildered when planning the move and wondered how we would combine my Hungarian and his Indian backgrounds. But we are in a neutral country and in many ways we follow the Dutch routine and we take the best of both of our cultures. Apart from the internationals, we also have Dutch friends; it makes it easier to feel at home. As a couple we are very passionate about other cultures and before having kids, we traveled to various corners of the world, which enabled us to learn a lot about other cultures, to meet local people and to taste different types of cuisine.”

Zsófia has a life-long interest in different cultures, languages and teaching, through which she found a way to feel a part of the Dutch society when first moving to the Netherlands almost nine years ago. “I was lucky to find work three months after I moved to Delft, which helped me feel less homesick. I gave English classes to business professionals and companies. The work was very exciting and challenging and kept me so busy that I forgot about homesickness. I worked there for 3,5 years, until our first daughter was born. I had a great time, I learned a lot about the Dutch working culture with the help of my fantastic manager who let me take time to learn about giving courses in a business environment, as it was something completely new compared to teaching school children in my home country. But the long hours and teaching in the evening were the reasons I stopped working as long as my children were small. In my field of teaching it’s easy to pick up where I left afterwards. I figured I’d focus my passion about teaching on my children. I want to spend as much time with them as possible. When they are home, I don’t open my laptop or my email.”

About two years ago when the previous coordinator of Bumps and Babies playgroup moved away, Zsófia was asked to take on the responsibility. “I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to meet new moms, share the knowledge and have my children interact with other kids. The group has been growing significantly in the last few years from a handful of moms attending to an average 10-15 moms.” Zsófia also attends the Tuesday playgroup by volunteering to open it once a month and is one of the leads in the new Delft MaMa program called SliDe, which is aimed to match newcomers to Delft with mentors who help them to adapt to the Dutch lifestyle and customs. “We trained our volunteers and applied for grants. We are expecting to get more requests when the academic school year starts. It’s a pilot program, so we need to adjust it still, but it’s going well as we have made several successful matches. So far I have been busy emailing companies, international schools and various organizations informing about this opportunity. They truly appreciate our efforts and they will make sure their parents at schools or companies hear about SliDe.”

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Delft Mama of the week: Johanna

Delft Mama of the week, Johanna, is a mother of Gus (4,5) and is expecting a little sister for him to be born in August. By the time this story comes out, this family will be landing in Canada, after living in the Netherlands for nearly a decade. Johanna’s mother-in-law comes from Eindhoven, which is the reason they ended up in Europe in the first place. “My husband Jason was born and raised in Canada and we met in university in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We thought we’d use the fact that he had Dutch citizenship through his mother to come see what it was like to live here. Our plan was, maybe a year or two, definitely move home before we have kids, and that we’d have a little European adventure. We came to Delft, because his job had a boarding program that put him up for two weeks in the Koophandel in Beestenmarkt. The bells ringing every morning and looking at the cafés on the square was my European dream. I was home.” 

The couple found a small apartment and on those early days they lived simply, just like they had been living in Canada as students. In fact their first community in Delft was a group of students and young professionals that Johanna and Jason met through the Delftians. “We all became very close quite quickly and we spent every weekend together. That first group with the international students was our community and I also needed to branch out and be a part of the Dutch community, so I joined the DDS rowing club as well. Those were my first close Dutch friends. We were lucky to be also invited to play squash with some of Jason’s Dutch colleagues and that was another Dutch community that we became a part of early on.” 

Eventually Johanna found work at the American School in The Hague and started teaching environmental science there. The importance of the work community was significant as well. New opportunities to join new circles emerged to them once their son was born. “Gus was born in 2011 and that changed the make up of our community. We started meeting international and Dutch mothers and fathers. Delft MaMa has come to my life in the last year and a half. Only this year I got really involved by doing the work with refugees. I found a really incredible community of women in Delft MaMa. I feel I’ve been able to share my gifts while also learning from the gifts of the women in that group. It’s an incredible circle of strong, intelligent women that are really empowering of each other. I’ve treasured it in the time I’ve been a part of it. I have really been involved: when I find something that my heart is in, that I believe in, I jump in full-heartedly.”

Johanna says right now Delft feels like home more than anywhere, but they are very much looking forward of going back to Canada and letting their children experience the closeness of the immediate family as well as the wilderness and the sense of space. However, going back will be a transition. “I will be looking to other Delft Mamas who made the transition back to see how they’ve done it. I believe that when we move home, the community that we find, will be an international one with more European flavor. We will be drawn to people that have lived abroad or that are sympathetic to the ideas of European life. I think it will be a different mix than what it was before we left. We left as students and we’re going back as parents, so we’re going to be setting up a different life. What that will look like, I’m not quite sure.”

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Delft Mama of the week: Anna

Delft Mama of the week, Anna, has been a part of the community for nearly 4,5 years. As a daughter of a pastor and a director of an elderly house, she grew up with a very active social life. It’s no wonder that since February Anna has been the chairwoman of Delft MaMa. She is the mother of Nátán (2), but she attended long before becoming a mother: “I was invited by a friend to one of the playgroups in the library just to meet other internationals. Eventually I had lots of friends who were mostly moms, I was also looking after kids and after two years of living in Delft I became a mother myself.” Read More »Delft Mama of the week: Anna