02.21.2008
Day Five:
The Pub Again

So tonight is the last night of my buddy Rob’s stay. He heads back to the US tomorrow, so we hit up the pub again tonight. We were trying to hit up one of the soccer matches from his home town, but evidently they changed the schedule for the game, so we watched the first half of some rather uninteresting game between Everton and some other really shitty team from Norway.

Below, you will find a few pics of ‘The Bell’ in Pibrac, about 10 minutes outside of Saint Simon where I am staying. Both times that I have gone I have had a good time. Rob is good company for sure, I’m sad to see him go, I dunno what I’m going to do next week when he’s gone. Hopefully some of the work guys can help pass the time, only time will tell though.

So The Bell is actually located in this strip mall in Pibrac. It's so weird that such a cool place is located in a strip mall.

So......um yea, lots of coasters......

This random guy was in my picture of the TV, not that you've never seen a TV before, but you've never seen this one. lol.

My first Bangers and Mash. It was pretty darn good. My buddy said the sausage at this place is better than in England because these are all meat sausages, and in England they fill it with a bunch of non-meat filling. why? Who knows.

Here a bunch of English guys that walked in. Rob was telling me how he could tell what region they were from based on their accent. It is amazing how such a small country as the UK can have so many different accents when a place like America is 50 times as big with only 4 big accents. Pretty weird. Anyhow, the guy with the shaved head a super squeaky voice, so he was from Liverpool and the other fatter guy had a deeper accent, so he was from Manchester. Good stuff.

Traffic in France is ridiculous. Every street backs up when there's a roundabout in the way, it's so dumb. Imagine going down a freeway for 2 miles at 70mph, then have to come to a complete stop for a few hundred yards, just to make it through a roundabout, and then accelerate again. I don't totally understand why they have roundabouts in the rural areas, but they do. Here's the backup on the way home from work. No accident, just a roundabout making people go slow through it.

Evidently, the Saint Simon area is pretty ghetto, but you already knew that by the pics that I have already posted, but here are a few pics of the church itself for which the little town is named.

Behind the church is a small cemetery which has tombstones and mausoleums dating back to the mid 1800s, pretty crazy. I know its kind of creep that this is my second posting of pictures of cemeteries in france, but I am just amazed at how large and elaborate some of the burial sites are. Anyways…on to the pics of the cemetery.

So, as I am walking around the cemetery taking random pics, I keep hearing these hip hop/euro/techno beats with some dude talking over the top on a microphone. Now this being a semi-shady area, I think, well its either some dudes putting back 40s with the car radio on, or some cheesy guys with a ghetto blaster and the radio. So I walk out of the cemetery and around the block, and I see a bunch of flashing red and blue lights, so I think, well, they got popped by the police, suckas! Turns out, it’s a freaking park for little kids and there’s a carousel with a DJ that’s making all of the noise. Go figure.

Check out the Dora the Explorer painted in spray paint along the outside!

Here's a picture of the small markets and shops in Saint Simon. It's a pretty small place.

Anwyays…that was basically the happenings for the today. I know it’s kind of boring, sorry. I am hoping to do some more interesting stuff over the weekend.

This made my day though:

Well, its kind of late, and I kinda want to finish a few of the beers in the fridge and start tackling some of the DVDs I borrowed to come over here, so au revoir for tonight.