I left my heart in Cambodia.

So I've been thinking a lot about Cambodia.  About the marshy green landscape littered with rice paddies, the soupy weather, the wooden huts on stilts, and the skewered heads and bright fabrics at the market.  About the morning walks to the bakery, the elephant ride to the temple, and the bus ride to the rickety bus ride to the village.  I miss seeing six people stacked precariously on one moped, and water buffalo just hanging out in the shade.  But mostly I think about the people.  At times I am so overcome with missing them that it hurts.  You know that spot in the middle of your chest that just twinges when you miss someone or something?  Kind of like you've swallowed too much water in one gulp and it hurts as it goes down your throat.  It's like a literal heartache.
I have an ongoing battle with nostalgia and often have to remind myself that the best days lie ahead rather than behind me.  Just to seize the day and live in the moment.  However, when that bloody nostalgia gets the better of me, and I am suddenly flooded with it until my ears are bursting with the sounds of days past and my eyes are tearing up as my heart yearns for things that will never come again, I find it is mostly because of memories like Cambodia.  And there's no remedy for this sort of pain, but vomiting words onto a paper (or in this case into cyberspace) always helps closure come quicker.
The people there are just the most humble and hard working humans I have ever met.  They are selfless and loving and beautiful.  The beauty is shown in every wrinkle of their weathered faces, and each hole where a tooth is meant to be.  It shines out of them like moonlight- subtle and quiet.  They don't know they have it, nor do they work to achieve it, but rather it's an innate need to survive in their less that optimal conditions.  Oh how I love them.  Oh how I wish I could pull up on a bus again and see fifty kids with beaming faces running towards me full speed and never putting breaks on- just plowing into my tummy and hugging me and saying words I don't understand.  Except for one word.  "Akon tran." Thank you.
But it's me who should be thanking them.  And although I have let many days and nights go by without  acting on the gratitude I feel, I do love them and thank them.  Thank them for showing me what true happiness is, and to find it one only has to look outside themselves.

Here are some beautifully happy people for you to love as much as I do.  Notice their brightness.