I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth.

Anyone who has traveled a bit has probably come to realize that not everyone has it as good as we do in the states.  Lots of things are used to their fullest - sort of a waste not, want not attitude.

When I first got here, I had to figure out which bedroom I was going to stay in.  Not a hard thing to do since they both had full bathrooms attached to them, but one had more closet space.  I'm looking around, really kind of tired from a long flight (side note to those not in the loop, I had a flight from Chicago to Miami, a 10 hour layover in Miami, and then the 4 hour flight to TT, customs, etc.).  I know I should be figuring out if I should wash the sheets on the bed before I sleep in them, but after a sleepless night in an airplane and airport, I don't really care.  So I climb into bed to rest my weary head and something is poking me.  I adjust the pillow a bit and lay back down and get poked again.  Ok, what the heck is this?  So I reach my hand into the pillow and get poked about 3 or 4 more times.  I pulled the pillow out of the case and I realize that the pillow is stuffed with feathers.  However, in Trinidad, they apparently do not pull the quills off of the feather before they stuff them into the pillow.  I can just imagine frantic pillow makers grabbing the feathers at the chicken slaughter house..."This is great!  Can you believe that we're getting this stuff for free?  It will be pure profit when we sell these things!"  Needless to say that this little vegetarian went and found some other 'not so luxurious' pillows.

Now we move forward to Wednesday, getting my driver's license.  After spending 4 hours at the BMV, I'm famished.  So myself and another new teaching couple, Ryan and Meredith, decide to go to this little food stand across the street to get some roti - which is a local dish, basically various types of Indian food wrapped in a burrito like shell (utterly delicious by the way).  On the chalkboard by the cashier, today special - Cow Heel Soup.  Mmmmmm.

Now let's fast forward to the Saturday farmer's market.  How cool, lots of local fruits and vegetables.  Sounds like a great way to continue to learn what is local to the islands.  Aaron, Kate (yet another new teaching couple) set out on a little adventure to find this enormous market.  Apparently, this is such a big deal for many of the locals, that they will get there at 6:30 AM.  We opted for more of an 8:30-ish arrival.  You know, being fashionably late.  Anyway, we find this giant market, park the car, and walk into the first building, which is literally a meat market.  On the table of one of the first booths is a full, severed pig head.  A couple booths down, a stack (oh yes, a stack) of pig snouts.  Then there were some entire cow ribs (like in the first Rocky movie).  There were a lot of choice cuts of meat, just sitting on the cement counters at these booths.  I'm kind of curious how all that is sanitized (that's sarcasm if you didn't pick up on it).  There were some live ducks chilling out, probably not really realizing what was going on.  Some tiny little chicks that looked like yellow poof-balls, waiting to get executed.  And so on.  Good times.  Maybe that's why everyone gets there at 6:30.

Once we exited the meat market, and left the many, many, MANY, flies, we moved into the next building.  This was the fruits, veggies and clothing (which I'm sure isn't stolen and is authentic brand names).  The fruits and veggies market was great.  No complaint there, other than not knowing what to buy and what different things looked like.  Everyone was very friendly and helpful.  And I'm sure they didn't charge us silly Americans any extra when we had the conversation that went along the lines of..."What is this?"  "Um, that's an avocado, mon."  "Oh ok.  I'll take one of those."  Honestly, the thing was as big as a grapefruit.  I've never seen an avocado like that before.