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!