An important part of the study abroad experience is to immerse yourself in a different culture. This can be fun, exciting, scary or overwhelming – sometimes all at the same time.

I recently took the opportunity for some cultural immersion. It was as painful as it was gratifying.

Every year many people make a pilgrimage to a Basilica in Luján, Argentina. On Oct. 2, hundreds of thousands of Argentines (and one American) walked from Buenos Aires to Luján.

The walk is between 60 and 70 kilometers, depending on the starting point. I am told that the group that I went with walked 70 kilometers.

We left at about noon, and arrived some 15 hours later at about 3 a.m.

It was one of the most painful and impressive things that I have ever done. After the first 12 hours, it became very difficult just to move my legs. This surprised me because it is just over 40 miles.

People run marathons quite often without anything terrible happening, so I didn’t think that it was such a great distance.

Then at the halfway point, it was obvious that I would be crawling up the steps of the church. The final stretch was a long three-hour push into Lujan.

The streets were filled with battered, limping bodies. There were very few broken spirits, though.

There were medical stops along the way with people laying on stretchers or grass or whatever else they could find, and every once in a while there would be somebody throwing up on the side of the road.

The pain in the lower half of my body was excruciating. The basilica was beautiful, but I couldn’t really take it all in. I was overcome with an odd sickness.

I suddenly felt awful had to lay down in the square outside. At the final rest before getting on the bus home, I felt like I had a hundred knives stuck in the lower half of my body. I wanted both of my legs to be amputated, or maybe to be put down like a horse with a broken leg.

I laid down on the sidewalk and promptly asked a priest to give me the anointing of the sick. I was pretty sure that I was going to wake up in the morning.

Even in the most physically painful moments, and when I had almost lost my will to move on, it was gratifying to push myself past the limits of what I had thought possible.

I’m paying for it still, but it was a wonderful experience that I got to share with wonderful people.

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