It hurts me a little, but I must abandon this domain and return to my free Wordpress. My year of hosting is ending soon, and I won’t renew it. With the budget of a NGO journalist, it’s Web hosting or health insurance. I’ll miss my fancy widgets, and I’ll have to redo most of my portfolio.

Follow me back to http://jjunkie.wordpress.com, where it all started. I decided that domain-mapping is in my budget so you can also access it via www.isabelleroughol.com. As a house-re-warming present, I am posting photos of beautiful Colorado, to be followed soon by photographs of my Cambodian adventures.

Friends, if I haven’t written yet, it’s not that I don’t wish to share and appease your curiosity. I can’t even blame the relative difficulty of finding an Internet connection. It’s simply that I wouldn’t know where to start. If I thought I knew culture shock, I was mistaken. (And if I think I know it now, it’s only because I haven’t been into the countryside yet.) Just about everything I do and everything I see every day is entirely different from all I did and saw in the United States or in France. Still, I will try to share what I can.

The “shock” in culture shock, for many Westerners I think, comes from the intense poverty that hits you like a slap in the face the second you get off the plane. It’s nothing like the occasional homeless person you meet in the West or the pockets of poverty isolated in ghettos carefully hidden from view to all who do not wish to see. Here, you can’t miss it. Many people sleep on sidewalks at night, or live in shacks made of whatever scrap material they could find. Some inhabit buildings that bear the marks of bombings or fires, gaping holes in their facades, like a three-face dollhouse displaying its residents’ homelife to the crowded streets below. And like in a feed-a-kid-for-the-price-of-your-daily-coffee commercial, half-naked children share the sidewalks with skinny chicken and even skinnier stray cats.

But it’d be too easy if it were so one-dimensional. Amid the motorcycle taxis that seem to have withstood hundreds of crashes and been taken apart and rebuilt a dozen times, you also find shiny new SUVs on Phnom Penh streets. And 1-grand-a-night hotel rooms, glass and aluminum office buildings and teenagers into J-pop. From the air, the juxtaposition of shantys and modern developments was the first thing I noticed. Even modern malls, such as Sorya Market’s eight air-conditioned floors of consumerism heaven, have made their entry, with the plastic grandeur of a country that is just starting to discover mass consumption. It flashes, it glitters, it pops and it shimmers. It’s pink, it’s blue, it’s a freakin’ rainbow. It’s Hello Kitty and Santa Claus on acid. Yet, it’s a Cambodian market with its tumbling piles of pots and pans, and its $1 reproductions of Angkor temples next to the 52-inch flat-screen TV and the roller rink.

In a country that has only been standing on its two feet (and still, it wobbles) for barely a decade, the need for infrastructure and government intervention is obvious everywhere. Although I have seen garbage trucks driving about, for instance, the waste collection leaves something to be desired. Litter is everywhere, sometimes in neat piles when the street sweepers or homeowners have bothered, but most often scattered on the sidewalks and streets. The stench of the city — a mix of trash, piss from the men urinating on the streets, exhaust from age-old motorbikes, fish markets and stagnant waters, all macerating in the heat — is at times unbearable. Yet, sometimes, the hot air carries the overpowering smell of jasmine flowers, which are laid at the foot of Buddha statues in the city’s many pagodas. Then it’s a blessing.

The courtyard of the National Museum in Phnom Penh is typical Cambodian architecture.

Speaking of government, I should say a word of it. Cambodia has gone through many hurdles since the end of French colonial rule in 1954, not least of which was the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. The country has now been somewhat stable for about 10 years and relatively democratic compared to what existed before, although the governing style of the ruling Cambodia People’s Party often raises eyebrows (at least to outside observers, if not always to the people itself). The prime minister graces us with priceless quotes that need no embellishing. The hot topic of the day is land grabs: the real estate market is booming in Phnom Penh and elsewhere, and the price of land has skyrocketed (in fact, inflation is in the double digits in all things). Many farmers who have been on their land for generations don’t have titles to it, or they’re not powerful enough to resist the businessmen and friends of the powerful who grab the land for expensive developments. Public land has been sold to private developers, too, but the people has seen little of the money.

Yet, for all its flaws, I’m starting to love this country. The people have been extremely welcoming, and although my Khmer lessons only start in a few days, I’ve been able to communicate. The expat community is even larger than I had expected, and all Western amenities can be found fairly easily, although to keep a budget on a non-profit salary, it’s good to get used to a Cambodian lifestyle. I’m slowly but surely finding my marks: the restaurant by the office where I can have lunch for less than 2 dollars and watch BBC World, the motodop driver who can help me find anything, the swimming pool not far from my house where I escape the heat, and the cafe where I can blog while munching on fresh vegetables. I’ve even found the cockroaches’ point of entry in my room and promptly taped it shut. I’ll be ok here.

Ken Paulson, editor of USA Today, was our graduation speaker. He had one quote to be remembered. I roughly remember it as this: “Everyone talks about ‘the media’ as though we all meet in one big room on Tuesday mornings and decide what the agenda for the week is gonna be. So not true. We meet on Fridays.”

Congratulations, Missouri School of Journalism class of ‘08! I have learned tons with you and met some of the most fascinating people I know. I truly cherish the memories and wish I could have still learned more, done more, met more. I’m taking Mizzou with me to Cambodia.

I don’t know if this blog shall survive the move, since I might rather use my leisure time to explore the country and I won’t be online as often. We’ll see. In the meantime, see you in Phnom Penh!

Today, check out Tribune poking fun at itself, read Wikipedia’s featured article on “enterprising circus emcee” Ima Hogg, and wish - only wish - that Gmail’s custom time feature were actually real. You’ll never miss a deadline again.

To avoid being made a fool of, re-read Jack Shafer’s 2007 April Fool’s Day Defense Kit. Seen any good ones today? Add them in the comments.

PS: I’m now starting to wonder if the Times is serious about Mugabe resigning. But that would just be too cruel.

I put my reporter cap back on yesterday. Around 11.15 a.m., an explosion razed an entire house in the East Campus neighborhood of Columbia, Mo. In the explosion and the fire that ensued, Carl Sneed, 87, died, and his wife, Merna, 84, was gravely injured. A firefighter was also injured.

It was just 3 blocks away from my house, which actually shook from the blast. I honestly first thought it was my roommate once again slamming doors, but the sirens of fire trucks and ambulances told me otherwise. I rushed over there, though to his great credit, my roommate, photographer Kuba Wuls, got there even sooner and got some very telling pictures.

I called the Missourian and what ensued was an awesome example of teamwork on a local breaking news story. Our friendly neighborhood citizen journalism team, led by Clyde Bentley, practically a neighbor of the Sneeds, right away put together a Flickr gallery and got information from neighbors. One such neighbor submitted pictures that helped us identify the hero of the day, a firefighter who pulled Merna Sneed from the fire. We had a breaking news burst very quickly on the Web site and many updates throughout the day. The full story at the end of the day and the many sidebars painted a much more complete picture than the competing paper’s. We sent news alerts via text messages. We had reporters and editors working on site, in the newsroom and at the hospital. Convergence reporters brought back video, Kuba brought back wonderful pictures, and I was equipped with my own camera, too. (See below my first ever published picture. The slideshow above is a mix of published and unpublished ones.) See the whole coverage at www.columbiamissourian.com.

The most unusual thing that came out of that day’s coverage was an interesting twist on new media meets old media. Everyone in East Campus was asking questions all day. But East Campus is an odd neighborhood with a large student population and just as large a population of elderly people, who may not have the instinct (or even the Internet connection) to check the Web for more information. The Missourian’s Saturday edition being a weekly printed on Thursday nights, we had no way to get the news in print out to the people in time. (Note: We are also cursed with the Friday breaking news.) So we made one up. I use “we” loosely because I’m sure the credit goes to someone; I just wasn’t around when the idea came up so I couldn’t tell you who. Anyways, the Missourian had launched in partnership with the East Campus Neighborhood Association an email newsletter about the neighborhood. We revamped the idea for print. We designed a one-page, front-and-back newsletter with excerpts of our Web coverage, made 300 copies and 8 of us hit the streets, fixing the newsletter to doorknobs with rubber bands.

What really matters in this story is the tragedy of an old couple being stolen their right to a peaceful, quiet death. I’m usually wary about covering such tragedies because there is a fine line between serving the needs of your community and just plain preying on victims. I don’t mean to celebrate this day as an achievement in journalism, and I hope it’s not what this post sounds like. But in the end, I think we served our community right yesterday: when so many people were worried about what was going on and wanted to share who Mr. Sneed was, the Missourian delivered.

The work, of course, continued today. In no particular order and unfortunately not exhaustively, here are some of the people to be credited for these two days’ outstanding work: managing editor Reuben Stern, editor Katherine Reed, editor Clyde Bentley, assistant editor Katie Fretland, reporter Sean Sposito, reporter Matt Harris, news editor and Web site wizzard Jake Sherlock, photographer Kuba Wuls, photography director Rie Woodward, photo editing staff (don’t even know all your names, I’m so sorry), photographer Katie Barnes, editor Liz Heitzman, editor Jeanne Abbott, production chief Joy Mayer, convergence editor Mark Lewis, reporter Jonathon Braden, reporter Annie Harp, reporter Lauren Fredman, convergence editor Beth Androuais, convergence reporter Jenn Herseim, convergence editor Jennifer Leong, circulation yesmen Rob Weir and Bruce Moore, photographer Joshua A. Bickel, citizen journalist Jackie Kreigh … (Yes, we are a huge newsroom, and that helped.) Those are only the ones I personally saw work or whose credit I could find on the Web site. I know there are plenty more. I am both proud and humbled to be a part of this team.

Today, I attended demonstrations in Eritrea and Egypt. I might go to China and Cuba later. That’s me up there, on Hosni Mubarak Square in Cairo earlier today. Obviously, I haven’t been flying all over the world between classes. I am participating in Reporters Without Borders’ 24 hours against censorship on the Internet. The freedom of information group is organizing cyber-demonstrations all day in support of journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents who have been jailed, harassed or prosecuted for what they’ve posted on the Web. The demonstrations are held on virtual replicas of famous gathering spots in Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, the countries most famous for their crackdown of online speech. It’s just a bit of support from the bloggers who have it easy to those who don’t but still blog. Join the movement.

That’s all I gotta say about this, and apparently this is all Spitzer’s got to say.

It’s pretty much screaming “I’m guilty,” without actually using the words. No mention of a resignation yet, but it’s not looking good for Spitzer. As TPM ironically points out, that takes the debate on driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants off the table. Way off.