Hi friends, glad you have dropped in.
Here is a little about me and what’s I’m all about in this blog.
I was born in South Africa and I did my schooling and university training there.
There I trained and got my degree as a senior primary school teacher. I’ve also been a waitress, tutored children in maths, and lectured teachers training them to become teachers.
When we moved to Mongolia I was first a consultant at a Kindergarten, then I went on to become a teacher and librarian at one of the International schools before settling into being the teacher to our two children, I became a home school mom.
We lived there for 14 years. It was challenging and wonderful.
We still travel back there every year. We love going back to see our dearest friends who are like family to us.
why 1000 000 graces to uncluttered living & uncharted traveling?
uncluttered living
Uncluttered living includes things in my home and my exercising. I like to keep it all real and sustainable.
Firstly, I loved doing sport/exercising at school and I swam, did track running and played netball. When I was at university, all I managed to do was to take part in fitness classes at the local gym. When I started working I then did modern dance.
I love being fit and it helps me clear my head, that is why I still enjoy it so much.
Living in Mongolia proved to be a bit more challenging with regard to doing sport because of the extreme climate. I managed to use the treadmill to get some runs in and we also joined a gym with a swimming pool.
Later we moved to Germany, and this is where I learned to run and later get hooked on triathlons.
Secondly, I am a homebody but if my home becomes cluttered, I just cannot function. So, I am always looking for ways to keep our home comfortable and also manageable. And this means that I can get out of the door quickly and get to return to a settled and peaceful home.
So uncluttered living has become important to me in both of these areas.
uncharted travel
We travel for our work and our pleasure. I am always on the lookout for ways to keep this simple and fun. Join me on this journey of discovery.
We have traveled mostly around Asia and Europe and a little in Africa, the land of my birth. Keeping packing simple helps me keep it fun. I am still discovering ways to simplify it even further and that’s what I love to share with you here at a million graces. So much to learn and discover and lots of room for mistakes and improvements.
a little bit more about me
My home language is and has always been English, and at school, I also learned Afrikaans.
When we moved to Mongolia, we all learned to speak Mongolian with varying degrees of success. It is such an interesting and challenging language to learn. We had to learn a new alphabet because they use the Cyrillic alphabet.
Now we’ve learned German! The Afrikaans that I learned as my second language at school has helped me a bit with learning German.
The funny thing about learning new languages for me is that I can mostly still understand Afrikaans and Mongolian. But now when I try to speak either Mongolian or Afrikaans then only German comes out of my mouth.
This is both super frustrating and also so funny!
all in a name – amilliongraces
The name amilliongraces sums me up – Million was my maiden name, and it meant and still means to me that there are a million ways to achieve your goal.
This helps me and can help you stay the course, and be the girl or guy in a million – be you.
I hope that this helps you step up and step out of your comfort zone to get to your goal!
The word grace is front and center of the meaning of my new married name and for me, it represents the huge grace that exists for each person to reach their goal.
We each run or walk in our own lane, and we can cheer each other on. I would love to walk this out together with you.