Cambodia: family, old and new.

I went to Cambodia to hang out with my mom - I left Cambodia with a few more brothers. But not because my mom was getting frisky with Cambodians.

Mom has been staying at the same hotel in Kampong Thom for a few years now, and the guys who work there have started calling her "Mom." Apparently when they found out I was coming, they were excited to meet their "sister." The two guys on the left are two of my new brothers. [The other two are a couple of the students in the research group, and since my mom was their mother hen for the duration of the trip, I guess they were also temporary siblings.]

Samnang, who started out as our tour guide - he's also known my mom for a few years and started referring to me as his sister pretty quickly. When he heard we were going to parts of Cambodia he hadn't been to yet, he asked if he could join our group just as a friend, and the brother-sisterness continued. Even our driver, Vireak, started calling Mom "Mom." I like that Cambodians seem to like considering non-blood-related people to be family.

With the pseudo-mom of my Cambodian pseudo-brothers.

I also got to meet the family of Kolap, a Cambodian woman my family hosted while she was getting her master's in Wisconsin - so I guess I gained even more family!