Siem Reap

The baby--she looks two or three--can already say "phone." "Phone" and "you" and "give" in English. Also "dad"--she grabs my iPod with her sticky fingers and says "dad phone!" (I don't explain that mine is not, in fact, an iPhone; that I'm much more down to earth than that.) She expertly slides through the screens and is totally unimpressed with the photo I take of her.

Her brother, maybe six, joins us. He's much more into the camera. He also tells me "my dad has this phone." Then he tells me his dad "isn't coming." He jumps from that comment to his name, spelling it for me in the air. "The one that goes like this"--making a very fast, very dramatic swoosh in the air for an artistically huffy C. He asks my name. Periodically, he reminds me that "my dad isn't coming."

My bus, however, is coming, and I have to go suddenly in the middle of our kinetic spelling. "Are you listening to me?" he calls after me, as I run for the door after several quick goodbyes.

I think I'm wearing his mother's shoes. Someone took mine in the night.