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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1690311" data-attributes="member: 2205">The Great Dyal Vacation of 2004 Trip Journal Entry #10: July 11thSunday, and we had church mid-morning with my in-laws.  It was fun to go back to church here, as we had been going to church with this same crowd four years ago, for about four years or so after Spencer got too old for us to still slum with the student congregation.  I seriously thought that almost all our old friends in the area, who were grad students like I had been, had moved on about the same time we did, but I was surprised to find that there were more people still in the area that I counted friends than I thought.Talked to the Andersons (Peter and Meg) for a while, talked to the Fosters (Darryl and Rachel) for quite a while as well.  Rachel's brother was my best man ten years ago, and now lives in Phoenix or some place like that with his wife (with whom Julie and I sat him up) so we were able to catch up for a pretty good while.  In fact, we decided, based on Logan and his behaviour, that the third hour of church we'd just hang out in the hall and let him make as much noise as he felt like without bothering anyone else, so we chatted a fair amount with the other class skippers.Had at least one interesting interchange; I stood up to introduce myself during one of the classes, and someone sitting in front of me (can't remember her name, but certainly remember her face; she was there when we were) turned around as I sat down and said, "You look just like your Dad!"  I thought that was an extremely odd comment, being that my Dad never went to church in a College Station congregation (having lived in Bryan the whole time he was in the area) but I had gone to church with this woman for three years when I did.  Granted, my Dad's been around a long time; and even I still remember when there was only one congregation for all of Bryan/College Station, and later when we had two congregations but only one building.  Still, though, it seemed odd she'd remember him so well, but not me.Also, for what it's worth, I don't really look that much like my dad.  Sure, we both have the distinctive Dyal vulture-beak looking nose and Neanderthal sloping forehead (so do some of my brothers, for that matter) but it's really more our mannerisms and way of speaking that sets us together.  When my dad's visited us here at church in Michigan, a lot of the folks that only know me and not him say they can tell he's my dad, but not necessarily because we look alike. Anyway, that wasn't really a big deal; I wouldn't mind looking like my dad, I just don't think that I particularly do.  But I'm always amused by the relationships people thnink they see when they know something.  For instance, for years folks have told us that our kids look "just like me" when in fact, they very closely resemble pictures of my wife at their age.  They also typically say this about our boys, but not about Jessica, when in fact, Jessica looks like a female clone of the boys (who also look a bit like clones themselves, except for Logan.  And even then, it's really only his blue eyes that set him apart from the rest of them.)  Reminds me of a guy I used to know in Argentina who was a missionary with us.  He was a native Argentine, although he was from Las Pampas, or some other province down south from Buenos Aires.  He used to say his last name when introducing himself, Fernandez, in the worst yanqui American accent he could summon, and then speak normally the rest of the time, telling folks that he was actually American.  After he did this, people would without fail comment on the fact that yes, they could definately tell, he had an accent, although he did speak Spanish very well.  After the fact, we'd laugh about the perception of his "American" accent, which naturally he didn't have, that people almost always thought they heard.Although as he got longer in the tooth as a missionary he probably actually did pick up an accent of sorts.  You can't hang around Americans all the time without starting to pick up a little bit of our sloppy speaking habits, I suppose.Still, an interesting side note on the power of perception often defining reality more than reality itself.  And the only reason I took this long tangential detour?  Because we really didn't do anything else worth writing about today.  Hey, I never said every single day of this trip was going to be jam-packed with exciting, swashbuckling action, did I?</blockquote>

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