We arrived in Lujan early on Saturday morning, tired from a week full of fun in Buenos Aires and not quite knowing what to expect.

Cristina brought us over to the station for the mini bus “Combi” – the more expensive way to get back and forth from downtown to Lujan, which costs only about 80 ARS (approximately 8$ US) and boasts air conditioning, a slightly calmer crowd, and a station near the obelisk. Of course, my GIANT suitcase barely fit on the minibus…resulting in a highly embarrassing and classic moment in which myself, the bus driver and Cristina (saint that she is) were heaving and hauling for five minutes to get it on board. I wanted to crawl under my seat and die from embarrassment, especially when it became apparent that the only place on the bus the bag would physically fit was on the floor in the aisle, and one elegant-looking Lujanera loudly complained to the bus driver that he was compromising all of our safety by blocking the aisle. At least she left out the part about the stupid Americans. Making friends left and right and entering Lujan with a bang, woo! Anyway, the fact that Amanda and I made conversation so easily on the hour-long journey was a reassuring sign, since we still didn’t know each other too well yet at this point.

When we pulled in to “downtown” Lujan and hopped off (very tentatively) at what we were hoping was our correct stop, we felt completely like fish out of water. Here we were on the grass curb of someone’s house, sticking out like sore thumbs and with all of our giant bags, and it wasn’t even 10AM yet. After a few minutes, Carla pulled up in her car (as Cristina had promised that she would, although we weren’t so sure at first), and drove us a few blocks to our apartment. We were greeted by Veronica, one of the other school administrators, and Betty, the landlady, and once again I suffered the self-inflicted humiliation of having packed wayyyy too much crap as I hauled my bag up the stairs hoping I wouldn’t drop it and crush somebody.

The apartment is fine, with nice hardwood floors and big windows. The kitchen and bathroom are pretty dingy though, and it took us several attempts to get past our somewhat irrational (or maybe not) fear of the gas stove, which you have to light with a match. We were pleasantly surprised to see how nice the place is, until Betty showed us the cleaning supplies left behind by the previous tenants….complete with…ROACH SPRAY!! Yaaaay! And the can was almost empty. Yuck yuck yuck yuck. My heart sank and my irrational battle with these little demons began. But at least we have wifi! After giving us their respective phone numbers and asking us if we had any questions (ummm….no? I don’t know what questions to even ask at this point?) they said goodbye with a cheerful bustle of hugs and cheek kisses like a bunch of clucking hens and then left. And we were on our own in Lujan.

So what now? We were starving and hadn’t eaten yet. We decided to go out on a quest for breakfast, which in Lujan (or anywhere in Argentina) is quite a difficult feat, more than you would think. We went around the block a few times, struggling to orient ourselves with the lack of street signs, until we finally stumbled upon a café called “De Ja Vu” which only had about two other customers. We realized that it looked much more like a bar than a café, but it was the only thing we could find that was open, and we were hungry. We got some good coffee, but unfortunately, like everywhere else in Argentina, it’s pretty much impossible to find anything for breakfast besides medialunas (croissants), which are delicious but not exactly a hearty meal. We sat for a while, people watching out the window, and began to realize what a strange little place Lujan is.

As people started to emerge on to the deserted Saturday morning streets, we saw dreadlock mullets, packs of Argentine bros (the bro love is strong here- more on that later), horse and buggies filled with trash, and a family of four on a motorcycle, with the young mother on the back loosely clutching an infant in her arms in such a way that it looked like he would tumble on to the pavement the next time they hit a bump. We also witnessed about three almost car-crashes within about a half an hour, due to the complete lack of street signs, traffic laws or turn signals.

Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore….

After people-watching with stupefied looks on our faces for about an hour, the café started filling up more and we started to feel like animals in a zoo- we definitely stuck out, and the other clientele started staring us down, so we decided to leave.

We spent the rest of the day unpacking, attempting to get settled in, and walking around. We went to check out the basilica, which is pretty much Lujan’s one and only attraction, and completely comes out of nowhere. The rest of the town makes you feel almost like you’re in Mexico or Puerto Rico, (much more “authentically Latin American” than Buenos Aires) and then out of nowhere this huge plaza opens up with this enormous pink sandstone cathedral. Although noticeably much newer than cathedrals of similar grandeur I’ve seen elsewhere, the stunning and elaborate gothic architecture seems more like it belongs in an ancient European village than in this strange little town in the middle of Argentine farmland.

Apparently, it’s a really big deal, though, and every year twice a year, thousands of people make a pilgrimage journey on foot to come see it and get #blessed. The story behind it is a little stupid – sometime in the 1800’s, some dudes were transporting an important statue of the Virgin Mary from Buenos Aires to somewhere else, and miraculously, their horse and carriages refused to move any farther than this spot by the river about 60 kilometers from the capital. They deduced that it must be a blessed spot, since the Virgin Mary refused to move from this hallowed ground, so they said, “Yay! Lets make a huge-ass cathedral and build a town around it!”

Cynics/horrible people we may be, Amanda and I were speculating that maybe the guys with the horse and carriage just drank too much beer and didn’t feel like going any further and, or one of them forgot to bring the horse food, or something like that that they couldn’t tell their boss…so they said “Praise be! Let’s build an unnecessarily large and expensive church in the middle of a field to cover our butts!” No offense whatsoever to Christianity or Catholicism, but this seems like a slightly more realistic, not to mention more entertaining, version of the story…

That night we didn’t know what to do with ourselves, and were skeptical about going out anywhere, since Carla had told us “don’t go out late”, but we had failed to ask what her definition of “late” was. Does that mean after dark? After 8:00? After midnight? Or should we just not leave the apartment at all since we’re blatant yanquis and might as well have targets on our backs? We called her up to clarify and ask for a restaurant recommendation, and determined that we could go out after dark but shouldn’t stay out past midnight, and that there is a good place to eat called “El Mason” about a block from our apartment. Ok, easy enough, we can handle this, we thought.

45 minutes later, after wandering in all directions on the street sign-less blocks surrounding our apartment, we finally found the restaurant she was talking about- which was, as she had said, less than 100 meters from our house. ‘Doh!

El Mason is probably the nicest restaurant in “downtown” Lujan, with surprisingly trendy décor and a nice outdoor patio. I was not exactly expecting the quantity of bugs everywhere, though, buzzing around the streetlights in giant swarms and crickets hopping around everywhere, even inside such a nice restaurant. I guess that’s what rain + weeks of intense heat + river + farmland creates, though. Oh, and there were stray dogs wandering in between the white, candlelit tablecloths. I was comforted by the delicious homemade pasta with Bolognese sauce washed down with the first of many bottles of vino tinto that Amanda and I would split, mixed with good conversation. We arrived home safely, but were unpleasantly surprised to find the apartment buzzing with swarms of gnats, mosquitos and crickets, though, after we made the mistake of leaving the windows open all afternoon. Lesson learned! That night was my first of many tossing and turning with the sheet pulled all the way over my head.

I know, I know, I’m a total wimp. But hey, at least I admit it.

The next day, we ventured out to a grocery store we found just down the street from us, although we would eventually find a much better alternative. This one was really small and pretty dirty, with a sad collection of produce. We stocked up on the bare essentials, and mostly canned and dried foods.

The owners of the store were a Chinese family, and we were pleasantly surprised to see some fellow foreigners, although the cashier didn’t understand me when I repeated about five times “Somos de Estado Unidos” after he asked where we were from. I guess English to Spanish to Chinese doesn’t translate that well.

After our first successful but odd home-cooked meal of soup from a packet and rice, eaten out of Tupperware (its like camping, yay!), we spent the rest of the day people watching in the park in the sweltering heat. After three hours of this, we wandered down to the riverside, where all of the people were! That explained the somewhat strange lack of people in the rest of town. They were all by the river for this international food festival thingy, which, like the basilica, seemed to come out of nowhere! It was packed with people, stray dogs, and food stands from a surprisingly diverse number of different foreign countries and regions of Argentina. We were tempted by the frozen tropical drinks from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but ultimately settled on some German beers due to the long line and lots of flies buzzing around the sweet fruit overflowing on the counters.

The riverside is…strange. It looks like it probably was really nice about 30 years ago, but since has been tainted by pollution, littering and a lack of updates, which collectively makes the surrounding attractions (especially the old amusement park) look kind of creepy. We noticed some strange white lines on all the trees, about three feet up, which we assumed had been painted, only to find out later that…those are the results of the intense flooding, which happens several times a year! Woohoo!! After taking a look around, the intense asado smoke and swarming flies and mosquitoes made us head back to the apartment.

Lujan is definitely a lot to take in, and the level of difference from Buenos Aires (especially coming from the US) is a bit overwhelming. We still are fresh off the boat, however, so I am trying to keep an open mind and remember that I signed myself up for this and living abroad to teach English is something I’ve wanted to do as long as I can remember. I’m sure Lujan has its charms.

I guess we’ll just have to see what we’ve gotten ourselves into here…stay tuned.