Queen For A Year

Queen: For A Year - The Title of My Web Blog
I have been thinking a little about the title I chose for my web blog. Some people have been joking with me that the title of my blog is misleading and that it sounds like I am a gay guy who is acting like a "Queen". Other people think my blog is about a Beauty Queen who is presiding on her reign for a year. And, yet other people think that it will be about a female soldier stationed over-seas.

Technically, the term "Queen For A Year" refers to a woman in the military who is stationed over-seas (usually in a war zone) and who is in an environment where there are many more men then women.

For fun I googled "Queen For A Year" to see what I'd come up with on that term. I found the following link that talks about a female soldier, Kayla Williams, who wrote a book about her experiences in the American Military. She has this to say about the term and phenomenon of "Queen For A Year":

Any female soldier stationed abroad in a predominantly male military environment, she says, automatically becomes more attractive - "Queen for a Year" - and it can go to your head if you are unused to being noticed at home....

Here is the link to the web page showing a review Kayla Williams' book. Love My Rifle More Than You

Another blogger writes about the things he doesn't want to forget about Iraq.

He writes:
Queen for a Year - the fattest, ugliest, most obnoxious girls had the pick of the litter for one year. The line was "remember that you are only one plane ride from being ugly again."

The link to his blog is here. A Candle in the Dark - Blog

I didn't choose the title of my web blog knowing these things and it's not exactly a tell-all of my wild days chasing guys in Korea [that's for another blog someday - just kidding:)]. So, why did I choose this as a title for my blog? Well, let me clear up any confusion - that the brief blurb that I wrote in my profile doesn't - and tell you the inspiration behind the title of my blog.

I chose the title of my blog because any foreigner who looks like a "Westerner" does create quite a stir in - Korea - a homogeneous country.

As someone from my hometown wrote me in an e-mail when commenting on my blog (we) foreigners do get a surprising amount of attention in Korea. She told me how she and her boyfriend were living in the Sasang area of Busan and how they seemed to be the only foreigners there and how a guy driving a motorcycle actually fell off his bike and had an accident cause he was so busy looking back over his shoulder at them. I know it's hard to believe if you haven't been there and had similar things happen to you but its true.

Foreigners joke about being so noticed in Korea. As anyone who has read my posting titled "Neighborhood Boys" will know I even have/had Korean children watching everyday for me to walk by their house so they can run out and talk to me. After a while with all this attention you start to feel like you need to do your hair and make-up just to go to the store to pick up some milk for your cereal at breakfast. You know that wherever you go someone will be watching you and noticing what you look like.

Also, myself and some of my friends felt like we got so much attention that we were like "movie stars". One friend of mine who I'll call "Amber" told me how she had changed to a new color of eye shadow and how that class all her students would talk about was how it made her more pretty and that now she looked like a princess. She joked and told me, "After this I never dare teach class without my make up on. Now I know how Britney Spears must feel." So, I joked back and said, "If you are Britney Spears who are I? Queen Ann?" That sort of started our Queen For A Year jokes. After that whenever we would complain about getting too many stares etc., we would say "Oh, well, it's just part of being Queen For A Year."

I wanted some photos to add to this post. I didn't take these pictures with the idea of blogging instead it happened this way. After we started joking about being Queen For A Year wherever I went I tried on crowns to see how I would look. Here are some of my pics.




This is me trying on a Thai Crown at my favorite Thai restaurant in Itaewon, Seoul. The restaurant is called Thai Suki and I highly recommend it. Since I live in Busan I only get to go there about 3 times a year but the staff always remembers me and even encourages me to try on the Thai crown and model it every time I visit.

This is me trying on the head dress part of an outfit one of the girls wore on the day she graduated from Kindergarten. Look at "Sarah" in the background. She seems to be looking at me wondering, "Ann, Teacher, what are you doing?"

This is me in a paper crown. I wore it on Halloween Day at one school I worked at. I didn't really have anything in the way of a costume to wear so a friend made me a paper crown and told me I was now "Queen For A Year". In general, Koreans don't celebrate Halloween but every school I've ever worked at has had some kind of special event for Halloween - sometimes it was called "Carnival Day" and sometimes it was called "Market Day" and sometimes it was even called "Halloween".

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I hope this clears up any confusion anyone had regarding the title of my blog.