The Passion Fruit: Looking Into One of God's Strangest Vegetation Creations

The passion fruit is native to Brazil and is also known as the purple granadilla. According to Foodreference.com, the passion fruit has a brittle, wrinkled purple-brown rind enclosing flesh-covered seeds, something like a pomegranate. You can eat the seeds of the passion fruit along with the orange pulp straight from the shell.

Passion fruit provides vitamins A and C, potassium, and iron. There are only 16 calories per passion fruit. This is good news if you want to cut calories, bad news if you're stuck on Man vs. Wild with only passion fruit to sustain you.

A ripe passion fruit is rather old-looking with deep purple or brownish wrinkled skin. So don't be afraid of the rotten looking ones. Even if it's a little moldy on the outside, that usually doesn't affect the fruit inside.

According to "Food Lover's Companion" though the passion fruit does have a "seductively sweet-tart taste" and its fragrance is "tropical and perfumy" the name "passion fruit" is thought to come from parts of the plant's flowers that resemble different symbols of Christ's crucifixion, such as the crown of thorns.

So there are a few facts about the passion fruit. On with more pictures!

These next two pictures provide a contrast. My flash was on for the first picture, but not the second one. The colors are more realistic with the flash, but I appreciate the real texture and shadows of the flashless photo.



Take a look at the inside of these things. The seeds and slimy fruit part scrape away from the shell very easily. It's almost like eating a melted jello cup? Hmm... But you can see the little tabs where each seed must have been attatched prior to the trauma of being broken open... and eaten.






Next, I present to you some people who are passionate about passion fruit.















Games:
One of the Taiwanese teachers taught me a fun game. This may have been inspired by our experiences with battlegrounds and battle reinactments on Kimen island... but she showed me how to use the passion fruit like a grenade. Pull the stem out with your teeth and then chuck it.

We didn't do the chucking part inside our office...well, or at all, but I did see someone kick a passion fruit once and yellow juicy juice squirted out of it in a circular pattern as it rolled across the pavement. They're almost like paintballs, really. Paintballs that smell and taste really good.

Here ends our glimpse into the passion fruit. Would you like to learn more? (I feel like I'm LeVar Burton on Reading Rainbow! Cool!) Search the web. Visit your local library. That would be fun. Do you think there's a whole book somewhere about passion fruit?

I leave you with a thought...
Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. - Genesis 1:11-12

Cool!

Heartwarmers

My students are heartwarmers. Even if they are a little wild and "high octane" as I've been describing my 4th graders this year, and even if there are some rough days now and again, these kids are awesome. I'm reading through their journals right now. Hearing about their challenges and joys and all the other little things they share, makes my heart smile... which is then reflected on my face (I think).

I really like my job.

Praise God for that!

Preview

This is a passion fruit.

I've been fascinated by passion fruit since I learned of their real-life existence... which was when I moved to Taiwan. I took a series of photographs of passion fruits today and the people of CELA who eat passion fruits. I hope to make a sort of photo journalism project out of it. But for now, I present... a passion fruit preview. Yum.

Rock Stars

Sometimes I have this tendency to get excited or upset or something about something and then forget what it was I was feeling that way about...but remember that I had been feeling that way. Did that make sense? Does anyone else do that or is it just me? It could be just me. My memory's not always the greatest. See, after school today, a friend asked how my day was and I said good because my kids were rock stars. He asked why. I said because they worked hard or something... but it seemed like there was some other reason I especially felt that way today. I just couldn't remember what. Until now! I remembered! So I'm blogging about it! Ha!

So in E4, we pray at the beginning of each class. It's something that this class' teacher last year began with them and I wanted to keep it going. How it's gone the first bit of this school year is every day I say, "Okay. It's time to pray. Let's talk to God. What would you like to pray about today?" The first day of school, no one said anything, so that was fine and I just said a prayer. The second day, I was amazed when they started responding, "Family! Friends! Teacher Jenny! (Their teacher last year!) Teacher Peggy! (Who's soon expecting her first baby.) Peggy's baby! My dog! Homework!" Still, after making those requests, however, no one wanted to say a prayer out loud, so I would pray for those things.

TODAY, we started class and I asked if there were any requests. There were quite a few and I said, "Oh, I think I'll write these on the board to help me remember today." Then one boy raised his hand and said, "We can say the things. We did that with teacher Jenny last year." "Well, that would be great!" I responded with a bit of awed joy. So we prayed. It was awesome. They took a couple minutes to remind everyone that they could take turns and anyone could pray. But the kids explained it to each other. I gave no further instructions in the matter. Praise God for the faith of children and for the way they are the ones teaching ME so often. Even students that hadn't made requests before, I heard lifting up their parents or friends in prayer to God. There were prayers of thanksgiving and supplication both. And they prayed in turn with no problem. There was no rush. I was silently praying, "Wow. God. You're really up to some great things here. Thanks for hearing all these prayers, for really hearing them and answering." Some students didn't feel comfortable praying for some requests they had made, which was also fine, so at the end I prayed those requests and closed the prayer. AMEN! (Or as I've taught my kindergarteners, amen is kind of like a big "YES!")

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8

Thanks for prayers for the people here, the teachers and students alike. Please continue to pray that God may grow His gift of faith in the hearts of all and that we who already know Christ and the assurance of faith can continue to grow in Christ's love.

A Compliment

So there was a thunderstorm the other afternoon and one of the assistant teachers in the office was saying how she was afraid of the lightning. I chimed in that I liked thunderstorms and lightning. She was surprised and asked why.

Now, because her English isn't spectacular (it's better than my Chinese, definitely, but still) I started miming lightning flashing across the sky and then "Oooing" and "Ahhing" at them like an enthusiastic spectator at a 4th of July fireworks display. She looked at me with a rather serious face, shaking her head a bit, and said in perfect English, "You are so different."

The sentence was so unexpected coming from her that I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Let's Give Them Something to Talk About

I started writing this post a couple/three/four? weeks past... I'm going to post it now. :)
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For the past two years, I have confined my running to the Concordia Middle School campus and a track. This may explain the decline of my running enthusiasm and ability. A runner, in my opinion, needs an open road. Therefore, today, I decided that this year I was going out on the open road.

The problem is that the "open road" where I live is rather congested with stray dogs and scooters. But today, I tried it, and I loved it. As I was running past one particular elderly lady sitting outside her home, I smiled a "ni hao" and gave a nod. She suddenly lit up with a kind of grin that you give someone who has just cleverly flattered you, making you giggle. She clearly found me amusing.

But why? Here's what I'm guessing:
1) I'm a foreigner, a relatively tall, relatively light-haired foreigner at that. (This in and of itself is enough to amuse people.)
2) I'm running.
3) I'm running down the road. In the scooter lane actually. Facing oncoming traffic. Who does that?!
4) Wearing shorts and a t-shirt with my sleeves rolled up, I'm exposing a good deal of my skin to the evil sun. I mean, I'm not even wearing a hat or sunglasses. I'm scandalous. (Some scooters going past me are carrying riders with long pants, long sleeves, and helmets or sun hats.)
5) I'm smiling.

Another lady was out working in her garden, sporting long sleeves, and a large wide brimmed hat. At this point, I was coveting shade from passing power lines, so I finally had the sense to admire her (and her culture's) sun-blocking attire. She calls out in Chinese, "Good morning! Impressive!" That was just the encouragement I needed to make it up the last hill back to campus. Woot woot!

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Okay, now, it's been a few weeks since I typed that and I've enjoyed running the roads quite a bit since then. I still share a wave and smile with that little old lady each time I run. Actually, I often think, "Oh, that lady will miss me if I don't run today." Maybe I'm full of myself for thinking that, but it keeps me motivated, so rock on.
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Prayer requests:
* Please pray for the three new teachers as they continue to grow accustom to Taiwan, the ministry, the challenges, the blessings, and just the daily life here. And thank God they're here!

*Also, if you could pray for me, I'm taking an online class this semester and it's stressing me out a little bit. Please ask God for an extra little measure of organization and focus (traditionally, not my strong points).

Thanks much!