Mimi Do ETA :: 2001 - 2002 Daejeon Jungang Middle School
I
t’s hard to believe that I was an ETA over ten years ago. Like many KoreanAmericans, I went to Korea to “discover my roots,” only to find that my roots were deeper in the U.S. than in my parents’ native homeland. The more I learned about Koreans and Korean culture – through my students, my host family, and my own relatives living in Korea – the more I realized I was definitely more American than Korean. I was loud, I was independent, and I liked eating pizza more than golbaengi. In the context of Daejeon in 2001, I was an all-American girl. This patriotic revelation was further highlighted by the events of the time. As the ETA class of 2001-2002, we were in the difficult position of being ETAs during 9/11, which occurred only a few days after we were shipped off from ETA boot camp in Chuncheon. It was a scary time for us, one that our Korean colleagues and friends couldn’t fully comprehend, even as they tried to comfort us. Our role as Fulbright ambassadors was even more important then, given the anti-American sentiment that followed with Bush’s “Axis of Evil” comments, skater Anton Ohno’s gold win at the Olympics, and other grievances that our students held against us. On the plus side, we were all swept up in national pride and World Cup fever as Korea co-hosted the games for the first time. Despite the challenges of those uncertain times, my two years in Korea were among the most rewarding of my life. After my first year teaching, I stayed
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