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It's hard to know what to expect when you are going to Brazil. It's also hard for me to convey a lot of the experience, or prepare you for it. I am in an unusual position, since I was planning to go to France, and only switched into the Brazil program a month before school ended. But here are a few key points of what you should do in the time before the trip:

Portuguese 199

This is the required class that everyone who is going must take the semester beforehand. I guess it is supposed to be a crash course in Portuguese. It met for two hours twice a week. The teacher we had, Simone, was from Rio and was really great at keeping our interest. I learned very little of the language, partly because I knew no Spanish (as many of the other kids did), I was in the class for only a month (out of the 3 the class lasted), and the atmosphere was very relaxed. This class is still an invaluable source of information. First, you get to know the people with whom you will be going, and you can start planning what you want to do when you're in Brazil, such as extra travel, seeing sights, etc. Also, even if you don't pick up a single word of Portuguese, just hearing the language, and playing around with some of the pronunciation is helpful, and will make it easier for you when you need to use it later on. Finally, learning about cultural differences is also key; it is way better to learn these beforehand than to pick them up as you go along.

Shots

Remember you have to get shots, at least for Yellow fever, and Hepatitis B (or is it A??). The shots are expensive, and it may take a while to schedule an appointment even at McKinley, so go early, and plan it out in your expenses. If you are going to visit the Amazon rainforest, you need malaria pills. At this point, you may not know if you are going to go to the Amazon or not, so you might just get these pills anyway, and not use them, as I did. Also, you will probably be given Cipro by the doctor too. This is like a strong form of Imodium AD. Luckily, I never had to use either, but it seems that almost every one felt a little under the weather to varying degrees in the first week of the trip.

Passport & Visa

Like the shots, get your passport ready early. If you don't already have your passport, get it, and get some extra passport pictures, because IPENG wants them for some reason. The tricky part is getting the visa. You would think IPENG would coordinate this somehow, but you are completely on your own.

To get your visa, you have two options:

(1) Show up in person to the Brazilian embassy in Chicago, with the proper documents, $100, and wait while it's processed, which may take more than a day. http://www.braziltourism.org/visas.shtml is a good place to start.

(2) Go through a visa agency, which will cost you the $100 plus the cost to safely mail the proper documents, including passport, to them plus the cost of their processing fee.

If you live in the Chicago area, option (1) isn't so bad, you can just do this early in the summer after school lets out but before the trip. I had to go with option (2), since I live in C-U, and paying the extra to go through a visa agency was still better than going to Chicago to do it in person. I used an agency recommended by IPENG, which worked fine.

What to pack

IPENG gives you a list of what to pack, and you can go by that list for the most part. They tell you several times that the lighter you pack, the better, so you will try to pack even less, but in the end, you will still wish you packed less. They say try to pack with just one suitcase. I thought this was impossible at the time, but now I think I could. Definitely bring two suitcases, so you can take all the Brazilian things you love back home. I really wish I had a suitcase full of cachaça, soccer jerseys, hammocks, and souvenirs on the return flight home. I brought tons of stuff I didn't need, which made it harder to bring all the stuff I bought back. For instance:

Clothing: You will never ever need a long sleeve polo shirt, sweatshirt or sweater. Bring one at most. You could feel perfectly comfortable with just a bathing suit every single day. For the internship, bring nice pants, aka a pair or two of khakis. Also, don't forget shoes to go with the pants, as I did. T-shirts and shorts will get you through almost every other occasion. Many of the places you go out to at night require you to dress nice too, which means khakis and nice shoes again. I don't think I ever wore jeans once, although I brought 2 pairs. I also brought many polo shirts and a sweater I never touched.

Other Random Things to Bring:

A camera - essential for taking home all those memories. I invested in a digital camera before I went, and it was well worth it, as I have 300 pictures to enjoy now. Everyone who did use regular film was pleased with how well they develop film in Brazil, nonetheless.
Dictionary - get a compact one, and make sure it is Brazilian Portuguese. The more info packed into the smaller the space, the better. Good ones have verb conjugations in the back. Don't waste you're time on a book of phrases to get around. Most likely you will know how to form all the sentences in the book after a week, and you can just use the dictionary to look up nouns.
lonely planet Brazil - a very valuable "insider" guide to Brazil. This was consulted often. It has a wealth of information about traveling in Brazil. It's useful for planning trips, getting an introduction to Brazilian culture, learning what diseases you might catch, learning how to avoid getting robbed, where the best restaurants are, and other good stuff. I recommend getting this early and reading it ASAP.
Alarm clock - you can't rely on your internal rhythm to wake you up when you go to bed at 5:00am and need to get up at 8:00 for work.
School supplies - Sad but true, you'll need at least one pencil and a few sheets of paper.
Gifts - To break the ice, you probably want to get your family gifts. Go ahead and ask them (if you get in touch with them before you go) if there is anything they want. Sometimes something as simple as Apple Jacks or peanut butter will go a long way. I got my family a picture book of Illinois, some candy, and my host brother a Chicago Fire soccer jersey, as we both like soccer. You would be surprised how interesting soybeans and blue jays would be to Brazilians. The gifts went over well.

Money considerations:

An ATM card will be your best source of cash. To use it, you need to find a "banco vinte-quatro horas" to use it in. Although these are sometimes unreliable (not taking your card, giving you vague error messages), it's definitely the easiest way to get cash. You can always play around with the exchange rate too. When we were there, it ranged anywhere from R$2.97 to R$2.7 to the dollar. If it gets up to 2.97, pull more money out. That puts 100 Brazilian dollars in your pocket for only $33.67 American. You'll find that, around Fortaleza, nearly everything is cheap, especially food. You'll probably fall into the habit of dividing every price you see by 3, just to see how cheap it really is.

Credit cards are also fine for those bigger purchases, but remember to let your company know you are going to Brazil, lest they think your card has been hijacked, and they cancel it.

Traveler's checks are terrible. I don't know why IPENG recommends you get these before you go. I had $200 tied up in traveler's checks that I never used. Besides losing money on a poorer exchange rate, almost no merchant will except them, so you have to go find a place to cash them, and get charged a service fee for the exchange, thus making it a waste of time and money to carry these. I ended up using mine when I got back in the US, at gas stations and restaurants.