Lots of fun, a little work

I have about 15 minutes for a quick post, so I will get down a few thoughts quickly! If you have traveled with a tour, you know things are scheduled very tightly and you get very little alone time. It has been busy thus far, but a lot of fun! We arrived on Friday 7/25 without incident, and after some fun time at the zoo and a long drive, we arrived in San Ignacio, Belize, at the foot of the Maya mountains, or so they tell me. It's very hilly, more like the foothills of the Smokies than what we typically think of as mountains. We went to the market and climbed a pyramid with a view into Guatemala just 9 miles away on Saturday. On Sunday, we went zip lining on a 12-line course that stretched through the jungle canopy, and the last one took you on an elevator above the canopy for the most amazing view! The elevator was the scariest part. Once you see how safely they clip you on, it's not scary at all. Well, not much.
My work with the fall prevention research started yesterday, and I encountered some challenges, some anticipated, some not. The promised set-up before we arrived didn't happen, and we had to scramble to make the area ready. This was complicated by the fact that we were working in a gazebo, and we had had torrential rain the night before (as we have been having every night). So, mopping had to happen, which Candy did for us. When the people arrived, I found I had issues of non-English speakers, illiteracy, and dementia to contend with. But out of the 9 people who came, 6 qualified for the study. I let everyone take part though. I found some people easily caught on to what I was trying to teach, while others really struggled. Even having lots of pictures didn't help much. I also found some interesting views on medicine. Two answers to the question of how to prevent falls were, bush medicine, and prayer! While I believe in prayer and some use of alternative medicine, they aren't really what I had in mind!
We also completed a home visit and got a good feel for how the home visits are going to go.
It was an exhausting but good day! Today we will go to Belmopan (about an hour away) and do it all over again!
PS - internet is slow here and I'm having a hard time uploading pictures to the blog. I will try again later!