Guess what, y’all?!?

Starting this week, I’m going barefoot with my friends Stephanie and Cherry Cordial for a bit, over at the DramaFever Blog!

What does that even mean, you ask?

Essentially, we’re gonna be writing a series of joint posts on Barefoot Friends, one of the new k-variety kids on the block. And we’ve been invited to do it on the DramaFever Blog.

Uh-huh. We now have something of an actual blogging gig other than our own blogs.

Surreal. But kinda cool.

A Little About Barefoot Friends:

The first episode of Barefoot Friends aired in Korea two Sundays ago, and the second episode just aired a couple of days ago.

I’m usually not much into variety, since kdrama is my main thang, but I watched episode one and rather liked it. It reminds me of 1 Night 2 Days, kinda. Except Barefoot’s got a bigger team. Oh, and the team has a girl. Which is a little Running Man-esque. Sorta.

Truth be told, I feel like the show’s still finding its feet, and the team members are still getting to know one another and finding their rhythm. Even so, the first episode was a pretty fun outing, and the show looks pretty promising. We’ve got some good chemistry among the cast members and they’re growing on me as a fun bunch to watch. Even though they mostly aren’t really barefoot 😉

DramaFever will be airing subbed episodes on Tuesdays, and our joint posts will go live from Thursday each week. Our posts will start with episode 2.

I’ll be updating this post regularly, with links to our posts over at the DramaFever blog, so if you’d like to join us on this adventure, you could bookmark this post and check back for updates weekly ^^

Or, you could click the handy link that I’ve posted in the side-bar, which links back to this post. It’s the one with the pretty bare feet, so you won’t miss it 😉

A Personal Aside:

This really is pretty surreal for me, coz as some of you know, I only began blogging a little over 4 months ago on something of a whim (go here if you’d like to read the origin story of the blog).

In less than 5 months, my blogging world has pretty much exploded.

From 11 views on my first day blogging, the blog’s now clocked close to 30,000 views. And accumulated almost 60 followers. In less than 5 months.

Woah.

That boggles my mind a little bit.

And now, I’m going to be blogging partners with Stephanie, on whose blog I used to be a total lurker. Funny how things work out sometimes, eh?

This is an adventure for all 3 of us, since it’s our first time dipping our toes into something like this. But we’ve got some ideas on how to make it fun for us and for you, and I hope you’ll join us ^^

Barefoot Friends Posts at DramaFever (to be updated regularly):

Introduction to the cast [by Stephanie]

Episode 2

Episode 2: The Lowdown [joint mini-recap]

Episode 2: The Throwdown [discussion]

Episode 2: The Scorecard [our faves for the episode]

Episode 3

Episode 3: The Lowdown

Episode 3: The Throwdown

Episode 3: The Scorecard

Episode 4

Episode 4: The Lowdown

Episode 4: The Throwdown

Episode 4: The Scorecard

Episode 5

Episode 5: The Lowdown

Episode 5: The Throwdown

Episode 5: The Scorecard

Episode 6

Episode 6: The Lowdown

Episode 6: The Throwdown

Episode 6: The Scorecard

Episode 7

Episode 7: The Lowdown

Episode 7: The Throwdown

Episode 7: The Scorecard

Episode 8

Episode 8: The Lowdown

Episode 8: The Throwdown

Episode 8: The Scorecard

Episode 9

Episode 9: The Lowdown

Episode 9: The Throwdown

Episode 9: The Scorecard

Update: June 25, 2013 – Goodbye, Drama Club

Wow, time has really flown by. It’s already been 8 weeks – 2 whole months! – since I first started this Barefoot adventure with Cherry and Stephanie. So many feels.

See, our posts for Episode 9 are our last set of Barefoot Friends posts for DramaFever.

No, Barefoot Friends didn’t get canceled. And no, DramaFever doesn’t hate us. In fact, we were offered 10 more weeks on the Barefoot Friends Drama Club.

It’s just that for various reasons, we all can’t commit to 10 more weeks on the Drama Club.

For me personally, I’ll be traveling for work several times over the next 10 weeks – Real Life commitments, y’know – and it would be pretty much murder to try to manage 3 joint posts a week while traveling. Trust me, we did manage it just once, for Episode 9, which happened when I was traveling, and it was very trying on the whole team.

Just to give you a flavor of what that was like, it involved Cherry waking up at 5:30am to chat with Steph and me, and Steph taking on extra editing load since I couldn’t do my part fully. It also involved me watching the episode raw with my very imperfect understanding of the Korean language, because when the subs came out I was busy working, but we still had to make deadline. Too crazy, yo.

We managed to deliver on Episode 9 by the seat of our pants, really. And considering that I have not one, but something like 4 trips over the next 10 weeks – including one where I will have zero wifi connection for the few days over which the Barefoot cycle happens – it’s just not sane nor humanly possible to continue.

So it’s with mixed feelings that I bid this adventure good-bye.

It’s been a huge learning experience working with the ladies on the Barefoot posts, and I’m grateful that I had the chance to work with them and learn so much. I will miss the chats, teamwork and solidarity. Thank you, ladies. ♥

It was a big time commitment, not to mention scheduling challenge, given our 3 different time zones, so I am relieved that I have this big thing off my checklist. I’m also glad to have my drama hours back. My diet is usually drama-heavy and variety-light, and I’ve been missing my drama.

But, I am also glad to have watched all the episodes of Barefoot Friends so far – which I might not have done, given my usually variety-light habits – coz it’s shown me the very lovable sides to our Barefoot team.

I’d only heard before, how Kim Hyun Joong is very good at variety, and now I can say with authority that he is amazing at it. I also found Yoon Si Yoon very adorable & sweet. And I’ve enjoyed getting to know Kim Bum Soo, Yoon Jong Shin, Yoo Se Yoon and Eunhyuk, whom I’ve found hilarious, but whom I hadn’t really known much about, before this show. And it’s been nice to see UEE come out of her shell more. Ho Dong I was already familiar with, from 1N2D, but it’s been nice to see him onscreen doing his thing again too. And it’s also been a pleasant side surprise, getting to know Lee Hyori. I love her good-natured humor and her gentle – and not-so-gentle – teasing ways.

No regrets whatsoever, y’all..

But it is time to bid this Drama Club good-bye. I’ll probably keep checking in on the Barefoot Friends team.. Just probably not on as strict a schedule 😉

Thanks so much, for joining us on this adventure.

And just coz I can, here:

Giggle. So cute! ♥