Erik MH:

blog entry

In which I con­tact La Sociedad Tolki­en Peru­ana, and make new friends

original date2024-01-19 14:00 utc
retroactively published2024-01-20 02:15 utc
topicsPeru; Tolkienists

People who know me well know that, des­pite being a shy intro­vert, per­haps para­dox­ic­ally, I love meet­ing people and get­ting to know them.

And so, after much delay, I reached out to the Per­uvi­an Tolki­en Soci­ety to let them know I was com­ing to Lima. The next day.

Des­pite the very short notice, each of the three seni­or officers respon­ded (in flaw­less Eng­lish) to let me know how very wel­come I was, how very excited they were, and to let me know that if I had any ques­tions about Lima, or Peru, or South Amer­ica, that they would be thrilled to help me.

Fur­ther, they invited me to the first of a series of vir­tu­al dis­cus­sion-group ses­sions as they begin to work their way through John Rateliff’s The His­tory of The Hob­bit.

I thought that would be very fun, of course, so des­pite my hav­ing flown a red-eye flight the night before, and des­pite the fact that the ses­sion wouldn’t start until 9:00pm, I accepted.

And then they had the idea that they (the three officers) could join me in my Airb­nb so that we could meet in per­son. I was a little trep­id­a­tious, not only due to my gen­er­al shy­ness but also because I really wasn’t sure what state I would be in — but again I accepted.

For­tu­nately, I got a second (well, more accur­ately a third or a fourth) wind. In the event, only two of them were able to make it. But they were so warm and wel­com­ing and gra­cious that I imme­di­ately felt at ease among friends.

And, against all prob­ab­il­ity, it turns out that my repu­ta­tion had pre­ceded me. Des­pite the fact that Tolkienists.org has been moth­balled for a full 18 months, they were quite famil­i­ar with it.

I was gobsmacked! And I have had my earn­est desire to make the site not only more inter­na­tion­ally com­pre­hens­ive, but also to make it multi-lin­gual, rein­forced. This will only be pos­sible, I believe, as a col­lab­or­at­ive effort. I’m not quite sure how to imple­ment it yet, but I’ll be think­ing about this as I fin­ish up the Andu­in™ pro­ject.

And in the mean­time, I have lovely new friends here in Lima!