Hola, Pucón

Right now I am listening to the pouring rain while in bed at Paradise Pucón, the hostel I'll be working at. Rain on the bottom means snow on the top! Tomorrow is supposed to be an epic day of powder. It has been dumping nonstop all day and will continue all night, with the sun coming out tomorrow morning in time for a day on the slopes. Amazing.
The journey from Chillan was relatively smooth. Chantelle found me, we killed time walking around, then 5 hours of talking about boys, skiing, traveling, food, etc while driving to Temuco. She happens to be a 25-year-old sponsored semi-pro skier who has competed in the X-Games and lives at Squaw Valley in Tahoe. She is currently based at El Colorado near Santiago for a couple months to get some summertime skiing in, but when she saw the snow report for Pucón she couldn't resist coming down. Wow, I'm swimming with the big fishes now. We arrived at almost midnight, then had to search to find a hostel with open beds. Our taxi probably drove us to 8 places before anyone could take us. This morning, we slept in before hopping on a bus to Pucón. It was raining when we got here, so the 8 block walk to Paradise Pucón with my suitcase, ski bag, backpack and purse was not fun at all. Eventually, I arrived, and met Daniel's father, Leo, who is running things right now while Daniel's mother, Gloria, is in Santiago. She should be back around Sunday/Monday, when I will work out more of the details of my stay here. Chantelle decided to stay at the hostel next door because we ran into some other folks staying there. Paradise is a small hostel, more like a guest house, but it is nice. Welcome area, wi-fi, kitchen, dining room, big backyard for BBQs in summer, equipment area for hikes up volcano, 3 bathrooms, a few rooms, 3 dogs, 1 cat. Next door is bigger, slightly more official, and more social. I hung out there after dropping off my stuff and using internet for a while. (Side note: Gmail now offers free calls to the US. This means I can call anyone at home anytime from my computer. Yay!)
Next door I met some new interesting folks: a couple Aussies (Lauchlan/Locky just quit his job and is traveling in South America for a whole year), an American homeless landlord who started a charity teaching snowboarding in some disputed land between Pakistan and India, a Canadian (here partly to see a Shaman in Peru to cure the melanoma in his eye), 2 mountaineering guys who split their time between Utah and Alaska, and 2 Chileans who I will most likely spend much time with (a girl working next door who was eager for a friend, and the guy who Daniel has a partnership with for adventure tours).
Tomorrow, the guys will drive us in their rental car to the volcano, where they will trek all the way up and ski/board down. Chantelle and I will just take the lift and ski, although she already warned me that there are no friends on pow days and she will not wait if I slow her down. Yikes. After, probably some hotsprings.
Chantelle has an Argentinian friend in Tahoe whose brother lives in Bariloche and offered his house if we come visit. We are both tempted, especially because the guys next door are also planning a trip there in the next week.
I'm both so incredibly excited and nervous to go out tomorrow and see what this much snow is like. My short little narrow Volkls from 5 years ago may not be able to handle the conditions, but I'll give it my best shot. Definitely need to sleep. More tomorrow.