As my internship is implemented in the scope of Agroecology, I first of all got introduced to the agroecology movement in Brazil. After I had a week to arrive in Vicosa, to get familiar with the culture and the people, I went to the agroecology conference in Brasilia, together with my supervisor. I need to admit that I did not learned much about agroecology before I came to Brazil. At my university in the Netherlands, I visit the crop production domain, however I did not yet learn much about alternative agricultural systems. In my first year at my university I implemented an internship at a crop production farm, which is mainly organic and I learned a lot of the farming practices. Besides I read a lot about farming and after I have worked on a project with a biodynamic farmer and a farmer which has established an agroforestry system, I was always very interested to learn more about these alternative food production systems. Especially after seeing the food forest in the Nether
Olá Everyone! My name is Leonie, I am from Germany, and I am studying ´International Food & Agribusiness´ at the HAS University of applied sciences in den Bosch, Netherlands. I am 22 years old and I have now finished my second year of my study. Therefore, I am happy that I get the chance to spend the first half of my 3 rd year in beautiful Brazil. I arrived in Vicosa, Minas Gerais on the 29 th of August and I am very happy to be finally here. Before I could step in the plane, I had a lot of struggles with my preparations for Brazil as nothing seemed to work out. I was planning to fly to Brazil already two weeks before my internship starts, to meet a friend and get to know the language and culture a little bit better. Unfortunately, it took much longer to get all the documents for the visa application and subsequently I had to change my flight (which was also much more difficult than I thought). The trip to Vicosa was very long and I was very exhausted when I arrived. But