Name: Mimi Hanna Park

City: Great Falls, Montana

Age: 19

Occupation: Student at Boston University; summer job at Staples as a sales associate

How did you end up in Montana? My dad was in the Air Force my entire life, and so we moved around quite a few times. The last place we were in before coming to Montana was San Antonio, Texas. My dad planned to retire from the Air Force, but still planned to keep a civilian job in the military. We were offered several different choices of where we wanted to go. Then a man who had just transferred from Great Falls to San Antonio told us that Great Falls was a nice, quiet and family-friendly city, and also that C.M. Russell High School was a very good public high school. So, we ended up in Great Falls mainly because my parents saw it as the best place for me to go to high school.

How many times have you been asked that question? More times than I can remember! Especially in Boston. Most of the students I meet are from California or the East Coast, so Montana’s a novelty for them! Even in Great Falls, those who know that I had lived in many different states are curious to know how we ended up in Great Falls.

Mimi at home with her mom, Mal, and their Chihuahua, Cocoa.

Where do you get your Korean food and groceries? A small Korean store opened here, but the selection is both limited and costly. We go shopping in Tacoma and Seattle, in Washington, and also ask Korean friends in town to pick up some groceries for us when they go to either Washington or Colorado.

Describe your Koreatown and the Korean community: It was a very interesting experience in college for me in Boston, where there are many more Koreans, and Asians in general, because I wasn’t used to that, living in Great Falls. It’s a very small community here, and, of course, several Korean families are military, so they come and go. Because it’s very small, we all know each other very well; it’s rare when we come across another fellow Korean during shopping, et cetera, and don’t know him or her. The drawbacks are the lack of Korean groceries and culture. [And since] Great Falls is a small city, when you run into differences with others, it’s well-published — everyone knows everything! There are many advantages as well. For one, it makes all of us, and especially my family, appreciate the smaller things, such as satellite access to Korean TV channels. I don’t know what I would do without my favorite TV drama — “Haesin”! Also, my family has bonded very closely with some of the Koreans here, and that bond has helped a lot when we were strangers, and even now, of course, because we have such good and dependable friends in town.

Park at the grill — barbecues are a family favorite during the summer.

What do you do for fun? I’m just a teenager: I hang out with my friends, go to movies and road-trip to the bigger cities to visit old friends from high school and to go shopping. However, there are certainly more unique, and very Montanan, activities. My best friend’s family owns a cattle ranch, and part of its details are branding the cattle … always a very different experience. And, of course, one of the favorite pastimes of people in Great Falls is to go rafting on hot days on the Missouri River, which cuts through GF.