Saturday, Nov. 10
This trip requires some context. Let’s go back to week 5. (Feel free to skip the context in italics)
Remember Caroline and Catalina? The two University of California students that also lived in the house with Jenny and me (and Marina before she left)? Well, there had been some awkward moments and some tension during their stay. (And during mine as well)
Starting with their first week, it was very obvious that Jenny was overwhelmed by the number of students that she had taken in. Which is understandable – it’s a lot to go from living alone to having 4 college-aged in your house. Four additional mouths to feed takes a toll on – four additional people in your house means higher utilities. It means that things get dirtier faster, it means that there are a lot more people using your stuff. However, she had signed up to take all of us in as a host mom – literally signed contracts. And because she was getting paid, this was her job.
Before Cat and Caroline arrived, there were some moments of tension. She would send WhatsApp voice messages to Marina and I, during the work day. These messages were usually in a distraught tone, and in rapid fire Spanish (Marina is not fluent in Spanish, so her coworkers had to translate). They started out as fair requests, “Girls, please keep the kitchen clean” but as the messages increased, their contents became pettier, and as receivers, Marina and I grew a little frustrated. She would get upset, telling us that we hadn’t completed certain chores that she had never discussed with us in the first place. These peaked the day before Cat and Caroline arrived. (In full disclosure, Jenny wasn’t a clean person to begin with – all of her personal spaces were a mess, she always had food going bad in the kitchen, and would leave dirty dishes out for days)
Upon their arrival, however, the shortcomings became more obvious. We’d run out of food really quickly, and Jenny would get upset with Cat and Caroline for “eating too much food” “like adolescents” (They were eating a normal amount, Jenny just wasn’t used to providing that much). She tried a variety of strategies to divide the food/limit their intake, provided excuses as to why she wouldn’t buy anymore, and by the end of it, she had neglected to go grocery shopping for almost a week.
Within the first week, Cat and Caroline were eating ramen noodles and eating frozen hamburgers (because Jenny didn’t have any food prepared as she was supposed to). While cooking frozen hamburgers, they accidentally heated up the glass cover on the gas stove and it shattered. Figuring that it was difficult to find a replacement and that her oven was defunct, she asked them to buy her a brand-new toaster oven (keep in mind, they broke a glass stove cover, completely unrelated) and asked them to go to the store next day and figure stuff out.
After the first week, the girls talked to their exchange program and Jenny. Jenny said that she felt uncomfortable, feeling like the girls were super close friends, but had not opened up enough to her. Without that relationship, she said that she felt like a hotel, a service, and that every time someone brought up that she was not upholding her contract, it hurt her feelings. They apologized for her hurt feelings, but reminded her that they were close because they shared a small room and the same schedule, whereas Jenny had an inverse schedule and was usually out of the house when they were home, so there was no time to build that relationship. They agreed to plan activities together so bond and Jenny promised to cook more food. (and for a couple days she did)
Fast forward a couple weeks and things were still a little awkward. The exchange program checked in with the girls, who told them that things were still a little tense, as Jenny was still not meeting all of their needs, as lined out in the contract. The program talked to Jenny a day later. As you can imagine, she didn’t take it well. She called me at work, upset, telling me that it was all “lies” and that she wanted to confront the girls that night, but wanted me there to be a neutral third-party referee. That hour-long discussion was uncomfortable to say the least. She spilled out all of her grievances – from them “eating too much”, to how she didn’t get along with them as much as me and Marina, to the fact that she thought the bathroom was messy, and ended it all by telling Caroline that she had a bad attitude and character for bringing up the contract. After her rant, she asked them for a response, but then talked over them as they responded.
After all of that, the next day, we were scheduled to go hiking in Cajón de Maipo as a bonding activity.
It was a little awkward – we were running late that morning because we needed to pack lunch, and find out where we were going. There wasn’t much food – so we had to get creative – I fried some eggs and mushrooms for myself, Caroline and Cat. Jenny kept complaining that we were taking forever, but if I hadn’t cooked, we wouldn’t have had decent food to eat, and as soon as we got in the car, she was the one that kept going inside, looking for things and holding us up (but it is what it is).
On the two-hour ride to the mountain corridor outside of the city, we stopped at a market to buy fruit for the first time in about a week, so that was nice. It was another feria, we pulled off of the side of the road and it was chaotic – people and produce everywhere –but always interesting.
Sitting shotgun, the ride was a little scary. Thankfully, Jenny avoided passing cars around the curvy mountainous roads when she saw how concerned I was… but it was still frightening.
We finally got up to Baños Morales in the mountains, and it was a little town in between the mountains. The weather was perfect – sunny but windy enough to be fresh… Jenny said that she had hiked this trail before, so we followed her lead, but we weren’t going the right way… We ended up asking a man with a house on the road for directions – he was really sweet and let us use the bathroom in his house. He was also really insistent that we try drinking the water from his tap, as it was “so much fresher” than the water in Santiago below.
After his redirection, we finally made it to the park. Jenny was able to convince the guy at the ticket desk to give us student discounts, which was nice!
We were only able to hike the first 3 km to the first checkpoint because we arrived to the park kind of late, but it was beautiful. We hiked a path adjacent to a stream where a herd of horses roamed. We could see a snow-covered mountain rise in the distance, and stripes of colors all throughout the rocks and hills around us.
After about an hour of hiking up, we stopped to eat lunch on a rock – sandwiches had never tasted so good (despite their mixed contents of fried eggs, mushrooms, a slice of ham, and avocado). Jenny shared some chocolate with us, which was nice, and we kept going – walking along the stream towards the horses on our way back down.
As we got back to the entrance of the park, someone yelled “Catalina!” and we turned around to find some friends of Catalina and Caroline. What a coincidence – they had just done the same hike on the same day. We talked to them for a moment and parted ways.
On our 2 hour trip back into Santiago, we stopped in the small town of San Jose de Maipo for coffee – Jenny was feeling a little tired at the wheel, so I insisted that we stop. There was a feria in the main plaza of the town, so I shopped around a bit, and split an icecream with Catalina. We had interesting conversations on the way back down, learned a bit more about Jenny’s past and everyone’s family.
When we finally got back to Santiago, Jenny had an event to get to, so we got to eat dinner and chill in the house, which was nice!
