Saying goodbye to Emily

I just began to know Emily, and now off she goes to Cambodia. But if the Peace Corps need her, I am just going to have to buck up and wish her Safe Travels and hope to have a new pen pal.

This week will be the last one for Emily Garland, reporter for the Renton Reporter, to be writing her local articles. Her plans are to then visit her family, currently living in Canada, and then head back to Renton to prepare for her July 21 departure date for Cambodia with 48 others.

This isn't some new idea to go abroad and teach English part-time and help develop kids programs for the nonprofit "Youth Profit" arm of the Peace Corps. It is a long process. Emily applied last summer and she was nominated for a spot just a little over a week ago. The Peace Corps will send you a special invitation, and if you are unable to take them up on the offer, there is no guarantee that a second one will be issued.

Emily had no plans to go to Cambodia. She initially told the Peace Corps that she would accept a posting anywhere and was initially told to maybe expect Azerbaijan. But Emily's recent foot surgery changed her window of availability, and she never imagined that she would be heading off to Southeast Asia.

Renton will miss Emily, and she assures me that she will be missing Renton. Emily began writing for the Renton Reporter in 2006, when there was still a King County Journal and the Reporter had yet to be purchased by Sound Publishing. As a Mass Communications major in school, she has been writing for a good many years. The change of scenery and work is going to be welcome, if not a little on the exotic and humid side.

There will be at least one person in the Peace Corps group who graduated from Emily's old Linfield College, Oregon Alma mater. But I hope that she remembers that she still has all of us here in Renton. We would love to hear her stories from afar.

Sorry, Emily - seems we still need you to keep writing for us.