When You Think You're Getting Guineps, Make Some Limeade!

So we learned this morning that despite the fact that we are well known around here as "Jamericans", the emphasis should still be placed on "Americans", unfortunately.

There is a fruit here called Guineps. Guineps look a lot like grapes, just bigger with a thicker skin. To eat a guinep, you peel of the outer skin, and then suck on the small ball of fruit inside. You eat all the fleshy fruit and then spit out the inner seed.
Guineps are amazing.

Yesterday evening we were shopping with the school's principal to get food and supplies for ourselves and for the 21 person team arriving today. Ms. Lawrence had told us that if we saw anything at all that we wanted while we were shopping to grab it and stick it in one of our three carts. So as we passed through the produce section we saw a container of guineps! They were being sold in bags with about 10 guineps per bag. We both saw them, looked at each other and smiled, and put one bag in our cart.

However, in Jamaica grocery stores the products are not as well labeled as they are in American grocery stores. There is a little tag to say how much it costs, but nothing that clearly states what the item actually is.
But regardless of that, we enjoyed our time at the grocery store and were very excited about our guineps. We decided last night that we would have some after our breakfast this morning as a nice way to start a day that is guaranteed to be busy.

Betsy placed the guinep in her mouth this morning to peel off the skin with her teeth and immediately spit it back out.
"Blech," she said. "That tasted awful."

Rachel carefully tried to peel hers with a fork while Betsy complained about the extremely strong, bitter, lime taste that the peel of the guinep had.

"Maybe it's a lime." Rachel said.
We both stopped.

Sure enough, once Rachel broke through the skin with the fork, there was no pink fleshy fruit of the guinep. It was definitely a lime.

"This is going to have to go in the memoir," Betsy said.
"Do we really want to put it in the memoir?" Rachel asked. "It'll just show how incredibly stupid we are." She paused. "I know, we'll post it on the blog."