counterclockwise

Sad to say I haven’t gotten a whole lot of teaching done at the coop here lately. Our computer monitor burnt out, which means a temporary halt to classes.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t been productive. We’ve been doing a lot of work with our actual business of giving loans and offering savings accounts. Sometime during 2006, the coop got behind on its bookkeeping. Some recent questions about our financial solvency have prompted us to do a complete re-tally of all our accounts. If I were trying to do that, and teach thirty hours a week, and design a new spreadsheet system, I’d go bonkers.

But the teaching load is off my shoulders for a bit here, and the timing couldn’t be better. I’ve done some nifty things in Excel. Now we just need to hire our next secretary so I can train somebody to use the new “hojas de calculo“.

The Guaraní word of the day is yva, meaning fruit.  The ciruela tree in my backyard has been raining little wild plums for about the last three weeks. Before that, it was the mango tree, and before that the lemon tree. The neighborhood kids tell me that the mandarin oranges are all but ready, but the grapefruit look like they need a month or more. Still no sign from the passionfruit and banana plants, but they’re good healthy specimens, so I live in hope.