Meet Dutch Mom Ellen (my big sister) living in Dorking, UK

My name is Ellen, I am Dutch, mother of two sons (9 and 7) and proud sister of Irene!
About 5 years ago we moved from Holland, where we lived in Rotterdam, to the English countryside.
It was my husband's work which brought us to Dorking, a small market town just an hour south of London.

Dorking is nestled in the beautiful Surrey hills and for us the town itself is perfect since it still has some lovely independent shops (Dorking is famous for its antique shops)
and more than enough coffee shops. I love the fact that I can cycle into town buy some fresh bread and have a nice cappuccino.
An added bonus is that within an hour you can be in the centre of London!
Talking about cycling, if there is something I miss then it must be cycling. In Holland everyone cycles everywhere. However, here in the UK cycling is something seen as a leisure activity and not so much as a means of transport. You have to be quite adventurous anyway to cycle here or maybe stupid because there are hardly any decent cycle paths and cars are just not used to having to cope with cyclists.

It didn't take us long to settle in. For our oldest son, who was 4 when we arrived in the UK, it was probably not so easy. He was dropped into a local school without speaking or understanding a word of English. Poor thing but he did wonderfully well and within less than 3 months he was able to make himself understood.

From the start people were very welcoming to us and were also interested in our backgrounds. It helped of course that we spoke the language, I can imagine that it is much harder to make contacts when you don't speak the language of the country you are moving to. It was via school and pre-school that I met most of my friends here and it is mainly because of them we feel so much at home here.

We live in a lovely period house with stunning views since it is positioned on a  hill. We are renting the house so there might be a few things which we would alter if it would be or own house but in general we love the space, the views and some of its features. Having two boys we are also lucky with having a lawn large and flat enough to play football on.
And if the weather is bad (luckily not that often) than we have a playroom in which the boys play 'inside' football. This is unfortunately nothing like all the beautifull kids rooms I sometimes see on this blog but for our boys it is all they want; an empty room in which they can mess about, kick a soft ball, play on the Wii and luckily our youngest will still build his castles here and dresses up as a knight or as his all time favourite...Spiderman. Our oldest son has never been very much into playing with toys, but apart from football, he loves drawing and most of all cooking. Since he was very young he always was standing beside me on his little stool when I was cooking and very interested in what I was doing.

I love the fact that all our rooms are south facing so it is a very sunny house. During the day we usually live in the kitchen and the dining room which has french doors leading to the back garden. My computer is in the dining room so whilst the children are at school I spend (too) much time here.

Since we've moved to the UK I've stopped working. I had never considered myself as a full time mum but rather enjoyed this the first years here in the UK. It gave me time to settle in here, to make friends and to spend more time with the children. I've really enjoyed that, but since the last 2 years or so I've been looking to start a new career. Since I've always worked in offices and don't really want to do that again I find it not easy to find something I would like to do and which I could also combine with the children. However, I've just embarked on a new adventure and started a course to become a personal trainer. Very exciting but scary as well. I've always been interested in healthy living, food, excercise etc. My aim is to be able to run small outdoor classes and give nutritional advice to for example women with little children who want to become fitter again and loose some weight. Or maybe my target group could be children or elderly people. Not completely sure yet but I am really looking forward to starting the course, learning new things and seeing whatever comes on my path!

Thank you so much big Sis for showing us a little bit of your life ... I miss you so much... but am very happy we will be together during the summer and I can finaly play again with my gorgeous nephews!!