Hello Everyone

[Elindomiel]

My name is Miranda... (was a bit difficult not to say Elindomiel, it's as if I regress five years through my life history the moment I log into a forum or something). The Fellowship of the Ring came to theatres when I was a girl of eleven, meaning I'm probably one of the youngest/last fans to have read the series before the movies were made. I spent my middle school years lotr role-playing on good old Ezboard. :) I was Elindomiel there, Sam remembers me and who knows, maybe one or two other people here.

Nowadays I'm a sophomore student at the University of Missouri, studying Journalism, International Studies, and Spanish. My dream is to be a Travel Journalist and learn the maximum number of foreign languages I can. ;) I'll always have a fondness, though, for my early imaginative journeys through Middle Earth and for my second language, Elvish (to this day I'm not ashamed to admit that's the first foreign language I learned). I do think the trilogy, and of course the many background books, had a profound effect on who I am today.

I doubt I'll be the most active member here, but I thought it might be fun to pop in from time to time... it's been a while since I talked much about the Lord of the Rings with people who know anything about them... ;)

[Emmie]

Welcome! From reading your introduction I'm excited to have you as a member, and I hope you do pop in whenever you get the chance. :)

Your introduction sounded similar to my own experience, actually - I'm older than you, but not by a lot; I never got into online roleplaying forums but I did post a lot on forums in general. And I remember waiting in line at 9am to see the movies each December and the wild anticipation that went with it. I'm sure I'll always be fond of both LOTR and online communities.

Good luck with your travel journalism! It sounds really fun. Have you studied any languages other than Elvish and Spanish?

[Lanyare]

Mae govannen, Elindomiel! Just like Emmie, I hope you'll be able to stop by often.
Can't say I'm familiar with the forum you mentioned, but Lord of the Rings is mainly what got me into posting on forums as well. I'm also one of those lucky few who can say to have read the books before there was even talk of the movies, and I started joining online communities (granted, that was after the movies) because I really don't have much people to talk about LotR to in RL.

Good luck on your studies! Sounds like a very interesting goal to work to. I too, love languages. I cannot pride myself about having seriously learnt English (yet!), but living in Belgium, I am familiar with learning more than one foreign language, and I've always loved it.

[Elindomiel]

Hey guys! Yeah, I remember the movies coming out. :D I went to RotK at least on the first night at midnight - I wore little elf ears too and a green dress I thought was pretty Elvish. Any more and I doubt my mom would have let me out of the house. ^^

I've actually studied a large number of languages, but Lanyare, you put me to shame. If you can't pride yourself on English than I can /only/ pride myself on English. After that come, in rapidly decreasing ability levels, Spanish, Norwegian, German, Italian... and a wee bit of Finnish, Faroese, Japanese, and most recently Hindi. I can also sort of get by in Danish and Swedish (from the Norwegian), and I can read Latin well and Icelandic a bit (from the Faroese). To give you some idea, in Spanish, Norwegian and German I'm apparently eligible to enroll as an exchange student in classes that are taught in those languages, so I'm planning to spend a semester in Spain, Norway, and Germany and do just that. The others (with the possible exception of Italian) are light years away from such a goal.

Wow, that was way more about languages than LotR, but that's what was asked... XD

So what are you guys doing? Studying? Working?

[Lanyare]

Shucks, lol... I meant Elvish there, not English. :o

I only know two foreign languages well enough to actually have decent conversations in them, and English is one of those, next to French. English more than French, lol. We had German as well in high school, but for some reason I didn't like it that much at the time (might have been the teacher perhaps, she was highly boring). Afterwards, I've studied Italian and Spanish a bit but I doubt I can even say that I can get by in these languages. Been planning to refresh both German and Italian sometime, and then to move on to something entirely new. I'd love to learn Danish and Greek as well, but not sure which of the two I'd like to do first. Long time still before I'll even get to those anyway. Might go for Danish since I have an online friend there that I got to meet last summer.
My only enemy: time constraints. Don't have much time to myself, let alone to study.

Hehe, as for Return of the King... I remember they did a marathon here, in theatres, with an avant-première of Return of the King. Off course, me being the crazy geek that I am, I had to be there. My brother, almost as crazy about Lord of the Rings as I am, accompanied me. They started in the afternoon and sometime at night they showed Return of the King. I loved the atmosphere that afternoon and evening, and especially how the audience stood up to applaud. It was the first time I ever saw people applaud in a movie theatre. Absolutely amazing. (Second time was only recently, after going to see This is It)

And to answer your question. I've been working for about 6 years now. Can't believe it's been that long already haha. I work at a mobile operator company and reply to complaints that are sent to us mainly by the national mediation service for telecommunication and other types of consumer organisations. Most of the time it's a nice job. ;)

[Sam]

Great to see you registered :D You'll love this place.

[Emmie]

I loved the atmosphere in the theater where I saw it, too - that was probably one of the best parts. There were some bits in the movie where people cheered/applauded every time, and there was plenty of applause at the end, though I don't remember if people actually stood up for that. Still, it was great to be in the middle of so much enthusiasm.

This particular theater is a bit of a drive for me from my current location, but I think I'm just going to stay with some friends in the area for a few days when The Hobbit is released because it'd be 100% worth it.

So what are you guys doing? Studying? Working? Bit of both at the moment, though the studying mostly involves working on my various projects (of which HF is one). Not sure what I'll be doing a year from now, though.