Sri Lanka is full of small villages like the one where the lush life villa is located, where you are greeted by the smiling faces of the village grandmothers, sitting out on their front benches to gossip into the evenings, where shepherds still tend sheep and cows, and where you’re more likely to be awoken by the temple morning chanting. Yes, this village is poor — people live with very little here, and have to be resourceful to survive. But, in seeing all of this, I was also able to appreciate the honest simplicity of it all. I joined them, and I am one of them.