El Peregrino:aka life on the farm

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After a couple of tough weeks, my time at the farm ended up being an amazing and life changing experience. I ended up staying a little over 5 weeks when at the beginning I didn´t know if I could stay for 2!!! I learned an incredible amount about nutrition, farming, organic living and about myself. I spent the majority of my time working with Ana. Ana is a 60 year old woman full of energy, life, and love. She has endless knowledge about nutrition and the human body. She shared her knowledge with me and gave me several books and handouts to read on my own. She even shared the painfull story about her sister who had cancer with me. The time at the farm has rekindled my interest and passion for health and nutrition and helped me begin to think about possible career choices.
While at the farm, I also learned a great amount about different plants and techniques to grow a garden. By the end of my stay the other volunteers would ask me when they needed to identify a plant or needed to know how to prepare something. The last couple weeks there were 7 volunteers who I spent all my time with. We all became close and my spanish improved immensely as we only spoke in Spanish. My last day on the farm was the birthday of one of the volunteers and I helped to prepare pastries with one of the french volunteers (I now have the recipes!!!) and we had a dance party to celebrate his birthday and my last night.
Through my experience at the farm I have begun to think about what is really important in life. Material things now seem much less important and I saw that it is possible to live off the land and reuse nearly everything instead of throwing things out. I also have learned that there is an alternative route to solve health problems that pills and common medicinal practices. (Ana spent a lot of time talking with me about my allergies and other health issues and taught me about how i can use natural medicine in the hope of improving my health). At El Peregrino, I saw that health, family, friends, love and compassion are the true keys to happiness.
I wish I could explain better how wonderful my experience at the farm was. I will soon put up photos of the farm so you all can see how beautiful it is!
I am now in Mendoza city for 3 days relaxing and running some errands. On Sunday i head back to Buenos Aires and next Thursday i am on a plane back to Colorado to see my wonderful family and dogs and will get to celebrate my mom´s birthday a couple days late with everyone!!!

Much love from South America!!!
Melanie

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