There's an issue.

I'm currently having issues with posting to blogger from the service I use right now, so I might have less posts here than I do anywhere else. I'll try to get this fixed as soon as possible, but for now, just check out the main blog at www.joseph-gutierrez.com.

I'm Cinderella today.

So I have another open class today. It’s for the fourth grade lesson about telling time. My co-teacher has decided to do role-playing as today’s main activity. I sort of like doing role-play in class so it’s cool. This time around, we’re doing Cinderella. For about five minutes of today’s lesson plan, I have to walk around the classroom with a fake tiara on my head asking students what time it is. It’s going to be a great day.

So The Pentaport Rock Festival finally posted some of the line-up on their site.  LCD Soundsystem looks like it's going to be the headliner.  More importantly, Hoobastank is still around?

What I learned in Korean today:

Hangul/Pronunciation

• 그조셉/gu jo saep

Translation

• It's what I tell people when they ask if I have a Korean name. It literally translates to "that Joseph."

I made this up without the intent of being funny. I got 그 from taking the first character when I transliterate my whole last name, 그티에레스, I was told afterwards by my co-workers it meant "that Joseph."

How I know I'm running late for work:

There's this little old lady who is always walking on the same street as me, but in the opposite direction. If I beat the lady to the crosswalk or get to the crosswalk at the same time as her, then I'm going to be on time. If she beats me to the crosswalk or I run into her at any point before the crosswalk, I'm late. Today, she caught me right in front of my house.

It must be something I ate.

Western Bacon Cheeseburger at Hooters

That's right. There's a Hooters in Korea. It's right across the street from Yongsan station. The food is pretty much exactly the same as it is back in the States, so if you've been before, you know it isn't the greatest. It isn't bad though and you know it hits the spot. The waitresses are just as friendly as they are back home too.

I have a new student, sort of.

Last week, the 6th grade P.E. teacher asked me to help him with his English, so we ended up scheduling a tutoring session once a week. I'm not entirely sure what he's expecting, but he's a nice guy, so I'll help him out. I sort of feel like I should be friends with him since I'm the only other employee younger than him (he's 26 and I'm 24 in Korea). Anyway, we have our first session in 10 minutes and I have no clue what to do. He's not the greatest at English. When he asked me to teach him, he said, "My English, I want to level-up." He's not horrible though. He understands a lot of what I say when we make small talk at lunch. I just have no clue what he wants to learn. Hopefully this all goes well.

I bought an external harddrive yesterday.

I took a trip down to Yongsan yesterday after work and bought myself a 1Tb external harddrive. It's probably more space than I'll need in Korea. It's also sort of a waste since I have a 1Tb external harddrive that's in an unopened box back home. I bought it before I left and meant to put shit on it, but never got around to it. Then I forgot to pack it so I've been without free harddrive space for the last few months. There's only 4 open gigs left on the laptop I'm using. I probably paid a little more than I should have for the harddrive, since I saw it on gmarket for a little less, but it was still a pretty fair price. Now that I have all this space, it means that there are going to be some changes with how I use the computer:

• I can finally start downloading random shit again. This basically means that I'm going to download a shit ton of anime, then sit there waiting for it to finish downloading, then sit there and watch it. You might not see me for a while because of this. I've already started downloading 50Gb worth of anime and TV shows.
• I'll also be able to catch up on some TV shows that I've wanted to watch. If you didn't know this, I'm one of the biggest Internet pirates this side of the Pacific Ocean.
• I usually lay in bed using my laptop while facing the TV. Since the harddrive I bought requires a power outlet and the cord isn't very long, I know have to use my computer while laying in bed and facing the wall. This probably means that I won't be watching as much NCIS as before.
• Music is available now. There's a ton of K-pop that I've been meaning to check out. It also means that I'll probably be purchasing some cheap mp3 player from somewhere, which I'll probably never use.
• I'll finally feel a lot safer after having all my pictures backed up on the external. For some dumb reason, I take pictures at 15 megapixels, but it's not like I really give a fuck about it since I have 16 gig memory card anyway.

How I know I'm running late for work

On my morning

formspring.me

Do you watch Korean movies?

• No I don't. I don't really watch movies for reasons that I've covered before. However, there are a few Korean movies that I do want to watch. I'll probably get around to them at some point. Probably when I get a DVD player or something.

Ask away.

Quit Facebook Day is in less than a week.

The date is set for May 31st, which is next Monday. People are deciding to organize against Facebook because of its privacy settings and some other vague reasons. As of right now, there's almost 15,000 users ready to quit. I see their reasoning behind it and all that, but I'm not going to be on this bandwagon, mostly because I sort of understand that the Internet isn't really the place for things you want to keep private.

I went to Deokjeokdo.

I pretty much decided that I would be going to Deokjeokdo an hour and a half before I left. I got a phone call from a friend waking me up and saying that everyone was meeting at the pier, so I spent a few minutes sitting in bed debating if I really wanted to go or not. Eventually I decided to go so I got ready, packed my shit, and was in a taxi to Yeonan Pier before I knew it.

Deokjeokdo is an island off the coast of Incheon. It's not really far and I guess it's one of the biggest islands on the west side of the Korean peninsula. It took about an hour and a half on the ferry to get there. The tickets weren't very expensive. It was 23,000won round-trip.

Here's a shot from the deck of the ferry. I'm standing around the middle of the ship. The ferry had three levels in all: the bottom for cars, the middle had a room for passengers, and the top with a smaller room for passengers and a place to buy some food.

Here's an accidental peace sign.

I ate this cup of ramen on the ship. The entire trip, travel time and the time on the island, was about 36 hours. I think I ate five of these in that span of time.

You might notice how horrible the sky looks in all these pictures. Well, it started raining while we were still on the ferry. It didn't really let up the entire time we were there, which is regrettable. It was still a fun time. Right after we got off the ferry, we entered a van with a Korean couple in it. They took us to the pension they owned. It was 40,000won for a room and there was a lot of us, so it wasn't too expensive.

We rented three rooms. They were all pretty decent sized. We were considering not getting a third room because we could cram ourselves into two rooms, which was sort of possible but we got the third anyway. It turns out that this was for the best, since our friends who were already out on the island camping had all the shit ruined in the rain and ended up crashing with us. We crammed almost 30 people into three rooms.

This is Coleman shooting off fireworks and smoking a cigarette out the window like a fucking badass.

I didn't take many pictures since it was raining and all. I didn't get to see much of the island either, but it was a pretty fun time. I'll probably go back again when I know that the weather will be nice. For now, I'll leave you with the best picture I took the entire trip:

This is my buddy Evan. He really likes the show Dexter.

This is what happens to things lost on the subway.

It's good to know for future reference. God knows that I've lost enough shit since I've been here.

My brother's playing Maplestory again.

He's never been so open about it before. He's not alone though. There's over 80,000 people who like it on Facebook though.

Another reason I hate the rain.

I'm sorry that every time it rains I have to blog and complain about it, but I really hate it that much. It's raining right now and it has been all weekend. The rain pretty much killed my time at Deokjeokdo, which I'll get into later today, but that's not the only thing. It turns out that the roof of my office started leaking. It ruined my calendar from Hoolala Chicken and the family trees that my students drew last week. Boo.

I went fishing.

I had the day off on Friday so I went fishing with a friend. We went with a group of other people from his language exchange place. I used to fish with my buddies back home pretty often off the pier, but I've never been boat fishing. It was a pretty good time. I didn't catch any fish, but it's probably because it's not like I tried very hard. My line got tangled and then I ended up taking a nap. It was a good nap though.

This is a great picture of Carmine. It's thanks to him that I had the opportunity to go out fishing.

This was the boat we took out. We left the dock around 8:00AM and stayed for about 6 hours. I kept thinking that it would somehow wreck and we'd have to pull some Gilligan's Island shit.

Here's me and the fishing gear we were using. There weren't any fishing rods. Instead we used these fishing lines wrapped around the thing in my hand with a the hooks. It reminded me of kite string. Anyway, you had to pull the line up by hand. It was a pretty weird thing to do.

We used millipedes as bait along with small fish. I think this might have been the first time I've ever seen millipedes in person.

The boat took us pretty far out. We went under the Incheon Bridge, which is a pretty neat landmark.

This is the only picture I took of the captain of the ship. He was a short little man, but he could do anything. I'm under the belief that God made him all-powerful but only with a thirty yard radius of his own boat.

This was the first catch of the day. I thought there was a decent number of catches throughout the day. Everyone caught fish like this ugly one. Most of them were about the size of my hand.

It was a good time and I'd recommend going. I probably wouldn't go again because it's a whole day event. I'd rather just buy a cheap little pole and go fishing off the pier at Wolmi-do.

Last minute change of plans.

Well, it's not like I really had plans in the first place, but it looks like I'm going to an island today and staying overnight. I'm just really hoping it doesn't fucking rain.

Google celebrates the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man.

There's a playable version on the homepage. Meanwhile, Ms. Pac-Man continues to get no love.

NIKE SPORTSWEAR: NSW+FBGT

NIKE SPORTSWEAR: NSW+FBGT from fla on Vimeo.

If you didn't know, fans of Korea's national soccer team are called the Red Devils. This is a funny little video from Sticky Monster Lab for Nike, but I don't know much else about it. If you want to find out more, you can poke around highsnobiety, where I originally found the video.

What I learned in Korean today:

Hangul/Pronunciation

• 공부하거나 집 에 가거 싶어요?/kong-boo-ha-geo-na jipe eh ga-geo ship-eo-yo?

Translation

• Do you want to study or go home?

I was able to put together this sentence yesterday while studying. My study buddy decided that we should stop studying and go home, so not much else was accomplished.

I'm giving up a few Saturdays.

I finished my open class. It went well, at least I thought it did. There were three mothers there. I'm not really sure if they enjoyed the class. One of them had a death glare the whole time, but she walked in with it, so I don't know. The best part is that I can finally take off my fucking tie. I usually don't wear one since it's too much of a hassle to deal with in the mornings.

Anyway, I have to go to a meeting after school today. I'm giving up two Saturday mornings to work at another elementary school and that's what the meeting is for. I'm sure I might regret doing this when I have to wake up early on a Saturday morning, but an extra sixty bucks for half a day's work is too hard to pass up. I can finally buy my T-Level bag without any regrets.

My open class is in 3 hours.

I'm still not really worried. My co-teacher and I just finished teaching the other 6th grade classes, so the only one left is the open class later today. The practices went well. I didn't have the script memorized this morning since I took a monstrous nap yesterday, but I think I got it all down now. I've also just been informed that the principal will not be attending since he's away on business. This is great news for me, not because he's scary or anything, but because in the powerpoint I made, I did a really poor job vectoring his image. Right now it's lunch time though, so I'll go get something to eat and then go play with the third graders. I couldn't really ask for an easier day.

There's a lot of work to do.

I've been pretty fucking busy at work. I have an open class tomorrow, which means that people are going to come observe and evaluate my co-teacher and me. Too be honest, I'm not really worried about it since it's not going to mean anything for me, but I like this co-teacher and there's a lot she's planned. I already finished the video, but I'm still working on the accompanying powerpoint for it. There's another activity I'm preparing too, where the kids have to guess their teachers' birthdays. It's not really difficult, but the way she wants all the images I'm using vectored and that's just a pain in the ass. It doesn't help that all the software on my computer, besides my browser, is in Korean. The worst part of this is that the whole class is scripted and she wants me to memorize it. I guess it's for the best that it's raining right now. It means I'm going to stay in and spend the rest of my day memorizing this mess.

formspring.me

I heard you are popular, can I have your autograph?

• Yeah, I'll sign your mousepad.

How happy are you in Korea? How happy are you going to be without Robyn and Julia?

• I'm very happy in Korea. I will be a lot less happy when they're gone.

Ask away.

My students love me.

It was Teachers' Day in Korea on Saturday. The kids have school on Saturdays, but I don't work on weekends so when I came into work today, there were a bunch of notes on my desk. Students came in between classes to give me more notes. It was very touching. I'm entirely convinced that I'm the most loved English teacher in Korea. My co-teacher hates it when I tell her this. I rubbed it in her face when one of the kids in my advanced class, Lee Ho, handed me a wrapped present today. When I unwrapped it later it turned out to be a dress shirt. Man, my students are awesome.

I went to the Seoul Lantern Festival.

This was my favorite one.

Fucking awesome.

My students made these for an art class.

formspring.me

Who is your favorite Chinese girl in LA? :)

• Tiffany Fan

Given that success is 100%, money not an issue- what is your greatest dream/desire/pursuit?

• To be honest, I would get married, buy a big house, raise a family, and live a long and happy life.

Ask away.

I went bowling today.

It's comforting to know that they're still AMF lanes here and that always means fun.

What I learned in Korean today:

Hangul/Pronunciation:

• 사진 찍어도 되요?/sa-jeen jjik-eo-do dweh-yo?

Translation:

• May I take your picture?

This question sort makes me sound like a creep. I think I'd rater just take pictures without asking and have people get mad at me.

Ferry Corsten is coming to Seoul.

He's going to be at Club Volume this Saturday. With Benassi on Friday, it's a good weekend for music in Korea. Too bad I'm all partied out though.

Ridiculous.

This 16-year-old boy was arrested for prostituting himself on the Internet. However, he sold himself as a woman and when he was caught, the police put him in a holding cell with other women. It says he was held with the women for 23 days until they eventually found out he was a boy.

Can you come back soon please. Everyone misses you.

I'll be back early 2011, but things like this remind me that I'm a far way from home and that I miss California.

Ask away.

Dried things from the ocean.

These are in abundance at Bupyeong Market.

This Korean dude makes millions K-pop shit on E-bay.

I can seriously do this. This article in the Chosun Ilbo is about Bae Woo Ri, who makes tons of money selling Girls' Generation and 2PM posters. He says he makes between anywhere from 25 to 50 million won in a month. If I don't find a hagwon job I like, it won't matter since I can be making some serious bank doing what he is.

Vanilla Lucy

;

I caught this on allkpop.com, but it's a new girl group Vanilla Lucy. They're a little different than other groups since they actually play instruments. I sort of like it. It's just feel-good music.

What will you be doing in Seoul? Not working, I'm assuming?

I'm actually just moving to Seoul to make my blog more interesting.

Ask away.

I'm organizing a picnic in Incheon.

Well, I've been throwing out the idea for the past month now, but every time I thought the weather was going to be cool, it started raining. I've decided that it's going to be at the Incheon Grand Park. Some people were suggesting Yeouido, which is a really nice place, but I figured an Incheon picnic should be in our city. Represent yo' shit! and other similar sentiments. Anyway, the date's not set in stone, but I'm thinking it's going to be the last weekend in May.

I feel for an occasion such as this, there must be proper activities. Here's what I'm thinking.

• Eating food (I'm thinking sort of potluck-ish with people pitching in for pizza)
• Drinking lots of beer
• 3-legged races
• Kick ball (maybe)
• A giant game of freeze tag

There's a lot more dumb shit I thought of, or things people suggested, but they escape me right now. Anyway, let me know if you have any ideas or anything.

Farewell, my Korean mother.

Last week, I had to say good-bye to my mom in Korea. She was this little old lady that worked at a BBQ restaurant that I went to all the time. She was so nice to me, she would hook me up with some food every once in a while, and would hug me whenever I walked in the door. She would even step out of the restaurant just to say hello when I walked by. A few months ago, you could collect six soju caps and then trade them in for a free movie ticket. She saved a whole bunch from people drinking in the restaurant and gave me all the caps. Now the restaurant is closed down and she's moved to Suwon. It really is sad. I figured that I would be going to that restaurant until I left Korea, but now when I walk past the Chinese restaurant that's there now, I feel a loneliness that only the saddest men have known. I know you'll never read this, but it's Mothers' Day and I would just like to say 감사합니다 [thank you].

The World DJ Festival was fucking AWESOME.

It was a great time. Vandalism had a sick set and the dub step on the side stage was entertaining. I'll do a more in depth post about it or something later, maybe when people I know post their pictures. The only bad experience I had in the night was that I dropped my cell phone into my own fucking cup of beer. It's so sad since I've had more accidents with my cell phones here in Korea than I've ever had back home. It isn't so bad though, since I put my SIM card into my old cell phone and everything works.

How exciting.

The 4th World DJ Festival in Seoul starts in less than 12 hours and I'm fucking excited. It's going to be a good time. I've found out there's going to be four different stages. I was a little worried about booze and I was getting ready to sneak in a bunch of my own, but it looks like Jager is one of the sponsors so everything works out. I'm probably not bringing my camera. I thought about it, since it's definitely going to be crazy, but I'm too afraid to break it, otherwise I'd be documenting the shit out of it.

formspring.me

ahh i see i see around 8 months? I came here in july but i gottah leave next time -.-;;;; it was nice while it last~ since you dont think you seen enough, where else in korea do you wanna go? & damn. thats intense bout your search for your friend~

• I still haven't been to Busan or Jeju. There's still a lot of Seoul left to be explored.

and i ran out of room to write lol. but yeahh i hope you find her soon~ do you plan on staying in korea for a while? and where in seoul are you if thats where you are?

• Before we go any further, I have to tell you that the story about me finding a friend is fake. I made it up because people kept asking me why I came to Korea and I decided to continue it because I thought it was funny.
  
• I'm planning on staying in Korea for a little bit longer. I currently live in Incheon but I'm planning on moving to Seoul in September. I haven't really decided how long I'll be there though.

What are your thoughts on David Thorne?

• I could do that shit.

Ask away.

Glad to know it's still the same in Korea.

I check craigslist fairly often. Back home I used to search it for bike parts and random shit all the time. Now that I'm in Korea, I usually check it for job postings and shit people are selling on the cheap because they're leaving the country. Sometimes I check all the other sections on craigslist, like tonight because it came up in conversation. Anyway, this is in my city, but what intrigues me the most is the "and more" part of the post. Like what's left, fake sex?

What I learned in Korean today:

Hangul - Pronunciation:

• 트렌스셴더 - tu-raen-su-jen-duh

Translation:

• Transgender

It's same same.

Incheon's magical streak is over.

I'm sure not many people care, but the SK Wyverns finally lost a game, ending their 16-game winning streak.

It must be something I ate.

Galbi-tang at the kogi jipe [meat house] behind my school.

Had this for lunch with my co-workers for lunch. It's great and that's all there is to it.

The Starcraft 2 Trailer

All you'll ever need.

I'm at a PC bang again.

I'm at Terra PC with Carmine and Evan and I'm about to seriously start practicing Starcraft 2. I wish I'm joking but I'm not. Seriously, I'm going to be practicing build orders and seeing which tech works for me. I'll probably be making a more in-depth post about this later, but for now, I just wanted to let all of you know how I'm spending my day off work.

So Kenny's leaving.

I don't have work today but I'm still fucking awake since I have to take Kenny to the airport. It's been good since he's been here, but I'm in desperate need of rest. Luckily, I have a five day weekend. I'm not sure what I'll be doing with myself, but studying for the GRE's and Starcraft II sound like great ideas.

Benny Benassi is coming to Seoul.

Show's on May 14th and you can cop the tickets for 40,000 right now on interpark.com. I'm not sure if I'll be able to go to this, especially with the World DJ Festival around the corner.

squaredreviews.com

My friend Stephen Ku, started this website and it's a hilarious idea. We basically take reviews and then review them. Here's my first review and it's on a review of Twitter from 2007.

Kim Yu-Na is on the 2010 Time 100.

So she made the Top 100 this time and that's really crazy. However, I'm a little more touched that Michelle Kwan was the one who wrote the article, since I love Michelle Kwan. You can check out the rest of the list here. Especially since Jet Li and Ben Stiller make the list.

formspring.me

did you ever find your friend here in korea??

• If you're talking about this one, then no. The first thing I did was go to the return address on the letters she sent. This took me to Bundang. When I told the cab driver where to take me, he just showed me a really confused look. Although I couldn't understand him very well, I was able to gather that those apartments were demolished in 2005. This doesn't make much sense because even the last letter I got from my friend in December 2008 had those apartments listed as the return address. Anyway, he knew where they used to be, so I had him take me there anyway so I could see for myself. The apartments were demolished to make way for a Home Plus. Dismayed, I walked into Bundang Central Park, which was right next to where the apartments used to be. While there, I noticed the playground. This is because that playground was the background of a polaroid picture she sent me in the summer of 2008 with the caption, "I come here to think all the time." I'm not sure what to do next. All I learned from the trip is that I know she didn't want me to know where she was living or that she couldn't tell me. She was probably still living in Bundang because she said that she went to the park all the time, but if she was lying about where she lived, she could have been lying about that too. The only thing I do really know is that I still have a lot of questions to ask and nowhere to go to get them answered.

Seriously... I have way too much time, but I'll see how long I'll keep up this dumb story.

I LIKE YOUR BLOG!! its so entertaining. even though im also in korea, i dont think i experienced or seen as much things as you ;o!!! keeeeep updating!

• Thanks. To be honest, I don't think I see enough. There's still a lot of shit I haven't done, but now that it's warming up, I'll probably get around to it.
  

how long have you been in korea so far? do you like it here?

• I've now been in Korea a little over 8 months and I have to say that I love it. I guess there isn't any particular reason why, but I'm enjoying myself.
  

I dream K-pop.

When I was napping earlier today, I had a crazy dream. My friend from back home called me and asked me if I could do her a huge favor. She needed me to pick her friend up at the airport and her friend was none other than CL from 2NE1. How they knew each other never came up, but I said yes. For some reason my brother was here in Korea and he picked me up in a car to go to the airport. I forgot my camera at home, so we had to turn back and that's where the dream ends.

It's been a good weekend.

Kenny's here visting Korea so we did a lot of touristy shit, which I don't really do on my own. Here's some of the things that we did:

• We went to the COEX Mall in Gangnam. Unfortunately, the Kimchi Museum was closed when we got there.
• Took a piss at Namsan Tower while overlooking the Seoul skyline. Seriously, the urinal at that place looks over the whole city.
• Walked into King Kong and people chanted my name. No joke.
• I bought a cute new camera strap.
• Saw police out in riot gear at Myong-dong today.
• Went to a party in Sinchon at a bar called JJ. The bartender opened up two bottles of vodka for us and gave out free beer.
• I got really drunk.
• Went to the ddok museum in Jogno 3-ga Station.
• Kenny went in 1,000 stores in Insadong to look for phone charms.

It doesn't sound like a lot, but we did tons of shit. There's still some more we have to do before Kenny leaves on Wednesday, but it'll be good shit.