engracados hushshsaushsa

my family went completely berserk when I told them I was vegetarian. they thought they had deeply offended me or something, and continue to ask me what my favorite food is so they can make it every day to make up for it.... they could not wrap their minds around the idea that I do not have a favorite food...

today I had água de coco (the inner liquid of a coconut, natural so it was drunk directly out of said coconut) and then the guy cut it open with this two foot long machete so I could eat the weird albino meat. very good actually.

I will edit this post later with more, but Lara wants me to help with her photo album. tchau!

EDIT:

we have been 'procurando para uma aula de capoeira' for a while now. (looking for a capoeira class), but hopefully we will find one. Lara tied this ribbon around my wrist and told me to make a wish for every knot she tied. superstitious, and everyone has one.

I am now well into my second week of school (though I cannot remember if it is tercera or cuarta - wednesday or thursday). I have been having a lot of crystallizing moments to say it poetically, mostly because I keep falling asleep in class and then waking up with a jolt thinking 'where AM I?'

I am still not completely accustomed to the schedule here. I often want to stay up late but if I stay up later than 10 I will be completely out during school. We have to wake up at 5:30 in order to get to school on time. Also it should be noted that I would not be surprised if I was killed by a crazy Brazilian driver. On the first day of driving Paulo (my host father) completely ignored that a bus' turn signal indicated that it was going to turn RIGHT INTO US if he didn't slow down. We ended up coming to a screeching halt and exchanging angry horn blares. craaazy.

brazilian drivers definitely do go faster around curves if they can. they just don't care.

Lara is really sad right now about leaving, and everyone keeps teasing me because I told them I only cried when I said goodbye to Jade. they also think I am some sort of weird alien because they are always cold and I never feel it.

right now I am in the biblioteca (library) while the rest of my class takes a física (physics) test, and apparently I am exempt from all forms of school-related responsibility as of yet. we have been watching a movie in english in my geografia class, called the Corporation. good movie actually.

also they had a map of the USA with all the states different colors for their political standings, Obama or McCain or undecided, and I counted the delegates up and Obama has 251, McCain has 151 and undecided in about 100. scaaaary. also my history teacher is apparently a communist and hates everyone (according to my classmates)

anyway if you are there and you read this you should comment so I know who I am writing this too.
- até logo
-----m

rápida

quick post:


I am drinking 'maracuja' juice right now...intersante.

here are a few pictures of my host sister and my class. I didn't take these, they are from Lara's avô's (grandmother's) computer.
Lara Santos Rocha, my host sister!
Lara with her dog, Medo (very small but energetic, he loves me because I pet him a lot)
my class, mostly, except from last year. Lara is in the front. the front row is Zen on the far left, a girl I do not know, then Lara, then Lara's friend Larah. the large girl on the far right is Naara and the whiter girl next to her is Lari! there are more..but there are many so I won't name them all unless someone asks.

tchau!!

--m

Os Brasiliers LOUCOS

oi todos!

my second day of school was confusing, again. I still do not understand the teachers when they talk, except for a short period today when the teacher was talking about social darwinism (´darwinismo social´...really? so easy) and albinoism (´albinoismo´).

Lara is amazing, she is so funny and helpful. We went walking by ´a praia´ (the beach) and went to the Salvador lighthouse. there was a museum and it was very interesting, I learned a lot of words and pronounciations (which sounds boring but is so useful...)

Today I was drawing in my sketchpad and basically zoning out (an expression I tried to explain to Lara, and succeeded!) and first one of my classmates, then almost my entire class of 38 students were all crowded around trying to tell me that I´m ´talented´, and one of them (Barbosa, he is VERY skinny and very weird, but funny, he likes to ruffle my hair when he sees me) was doing this hand motion that apparently means ´AY MEU DEUS ESSE E LEGAL!!´ (Oh my god this is cool!!). He had me teach him curse words, he wants to know all of them.

I´m eating meat again...it´s a little disconcerting. I go to put meat in my mouth and my head starts screaming ´NO WRONG BAD´...I trained myself well I guess!

They looked at my pictures of my friends and one girl (Lari) saw Ethan´s picture (not the stupid face one, a different one) and says ´OH! Ethan is...good-looking?´ and now every time she sees my photo album she finds his picture and goes ´good-looking?´. She also said that Ben has ´beautiful eye hair´. Jana said of Ben ´que linda!´ (I think she thought he was a girl...:P)

Lara says she is impressed by how fast I am learning Portuguese...I am trying to learn as fast as I can because she leaves in two weeks for Germany!

I have been so tired because I haven´t gotten sufficient sleep since surviving the jetlag from the flights...rawr

anyway...long blog post, I´m just really excited about this year!!! I´m not sure what I´ll do without Lara though...

beijos--M

ps. I saw Portuguese Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin e Haroldo?? haha riiiight) and Portuguese Woody the Woodpecker today (hahahaha!) also this guy on the radio said ´New Hampshire´ in the funniest way possible, he really enunicated the ´i´ like he was hiccuping or whistling or something. it was hilarious!! I laughed so much I think Paulo (my host father) thinks I´m crazy, but he was laughing too.

also I have had guaraná, cajé, pastel de ziri (crab cake), açai, piña, etc. Brazilian food e muito bem.

minha primeira dia de escola!

my first day of school went something like this:

I woke up at 5:30 in order to leave by 6:20. I got to school and everyone is all ´AN AMERICAN GIRL?? WHOA!!´

first class was English, which was confusingly short. it just sort of petered out and then we had like two hours of free time because the teacher had a ´circugia´ (surgery). Then the literature teacher came but didn´t teach, they practiced their play instead. Then we had a science class, all about sustainability, and then they all randomly burst out in song with drums and guitars and stuff. crazy Brazilians!

Then I was told that I was going to ´participate in theater´. I ended up having to say the line ´muito obrigada seu Paulo Roberto, muito obrigada Dona Joanna´...strange. I also had to read a paragraph in Portuguese but then I read a whole page in English and everyone was all confused.

I had a crab cake thing today, guarana, piña (a creamy weird fruit) and right now I´m eating corn and ´apina´ (a Brazilian potato thing).

there is more but I´m very tired. I also went to a rotary interact meeting, but I didn´t understand ANYTHING.

I´m trying! and Lara (my host sister) says I´m learning ´very quickly´ so that´s good!

pictures soon!

Salvador

oi todos!
I made it, obviously. Everyone~s telling me to speak Portuguese but I can~t yet..haha
I~m typing this with my host sister Lara and her friend Lara. Dad called yesterday to make sure I got in, and evidently I did.

Hope everyone~s doing great, I~m fantastic right now. More updates later (it~s 10 o~clock here!!)

Ç is on this keyboard, it~s disorienting! I can~t type quotes. :)
talk to you all later, and I hope Ian reads this and made it to his host family mostly in one piece (minus one tan fedora...sorry I didn~t find it!) also I hope Ally, Jasmine and Zoe all found their families.

tchau--
Madisyn

ps. it~s now 1 o~clock here and I~m going to bed. boa noite todos!
also if sky reads this, on the drive from the airport to the house the song Under the Bridge by the Chili Peppers came on! whoa!

tchau para segunda tempo

Apresentação!

My name is Madisyn Schultz. I live in Eugene in the state of Oregon on the west coast of the United States of America. Oregon is the state just to the north of California.
As of August 16th, 2008, I will be living in Salvador, a city of 2.8 million people in the state of Bahia, Brazil (Rotary International District 4550).
This will be my junior year of high school spent abroad and I'll be returning to the States for my senior year.
I will have three host families, and my first one will be the Rochas, who live in upper middle class Salvador. Their address is:

Rua João da Silva Campos 611
Salvador, BA 41.815-200

I will have a 15 year old host sister named Lara and a 1 year old brother named Pedro. My host father is named Paulo, he is 44 years old and a dentist.
My host mother is Lara's stepmother, her name is Rosa and she is 33 years old, also a dentist. She also teaches at the university. She is a Spaniard and thus speaks Spanish (which will be useful for me given the several years I took of Spanish in school). They have three dogs (Lila, Pitty and Mero) and some weekends they go to their house on the beach. My house is about 20 minutes from my school (Colégio de Antônio Vieira) which is a private school in Salvador.
Lara will be leaving in September for Germany through Rotary, and I'll be moving to my next host family a few months after I get there.

The Rochas (left to right: Lara, Paulo, Rosa and Pedro)

Here is my journey.
Bahia/Salvador Info:
"Salvador" is short for the city's full name: "São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos" which translates to "Holy Savior of All Saints' Bay". "Salvador", therefore, means "Savior".

The state of Bahia, which encompasses Salvador, has the longest coastline in Brazil. It's name means "Bay", which speaks of the All Saints' Bay, because of its enormity.

The population of Bahia is 13,950,146 as of 2006, making it the fourth most populous Brazilian state out of 26. Salvador de Bahia, the city I will be living in for the next year, is often called "Brazil's capital of happiness". It's population is 2,892,625 as of 2007, making it 19 TIMES bigger than Eugene, OR, where I've lived my entire life. (pop. 153,690 as of 2007)

Pictures from Brazil

http://picasaweb.google.com/maxxgnar/SalvadorBrazil200809RotaryYouthExchangeParteUM

Go to this website occasionally. I'm going to be uploading pictures of my exchange here. (WARNING: I'm going to dump ALL pictures onto Picasa; I will post my favorite select photos on this blog so I don't overload your servers)

UPDATE:
My official itinerary is as follows:

AUG 15, Friday: Leave on flight 1538 from Portland, OR (PDX) at 11:25AM
Arrive in Atlanta, GA at 7:13 PM
Take flight 105 from Atlanta, GA at 8:20PM
Arrive in São Paulo, Brazil at 6:55AM

AUG 16, Saturday: Leave on flight 3174 from São Paulo at 10:35AM
Arrive in Salvador, BA at 12:50 PM

At this point I will have been in transit for more than 24 hours.
But it has been confirmed that I'm spending the first two flights (Portland --> Atlanta, Atlanta --> São Paulo) with my good friend Ian Frank from Bandon who also happens to be going to Brazil (though he is headed to Abaeté, in Minas Gerais, which I have marked on the map - it's the red dot next to the flight path of my final flight to Salvador). His blog is: http://iansadventuresinbrazil.blogspot.com
Check it out.
Adeus!