Building on Experience

After leaving Iguazu Falls, I visited some friends in Santa Fe last week for my first stop in Argentina on the slow cross-continent trek to Chile. A friend that I met last time I passed through Santa Fe invited me to visit the school where she works and speak with the class about some of my experiences since beginning the trip. She was discussing the ideas of micro enterprise and sustainability, so I felt that it was appropriate to share what I learned on the permaculture site in Brazil.

The school is called La Cecilia - La Nueva Cultura (The New Culture), and it is a naturalist school with a significantly different philosophy of learning than any other I have encountered. Students are able to choose what they want to learn about and how they spend their time. The campus also has a small organic garden, so many of the permaculture ideas that I learned while at Sitio São Francisco in Brazil were suprisingly applicable to this completely different setting.

Showing pictures from the site to one of the classes

If you understand Spanish, you can read more about the school on their website. Two students interested in journalism pulled me aside for an interview (no, I didn't sign any autographs, though they did compare me to a couple of celebrities), and a film student took video. You can see the video from the interview on the school's blog.