An American in Provence

One thing that I am not sure I will ever get used to about city living is the noise. We have double-paned windows, but still hear the noise of the road (it is a busy boulevard). Strangely, the noise that Alain finds the most annoying (the cars), I find the least. The barking dog and our elderly neighbor's loud TV from 7-10 pm non-fail are much more annoying to me. I guess that is apartment living for you. The car noise just kind of blends together, like the sea only more polluting.
Thankfully, the dog has somewhat stopped. It was barking one night until 11 pm, so when we heard our neighbors come home, Alain went to go talk to them. He said that the dog is old and blind and when it is all alone it doesn't smell it's family so it gets lonely and barks. Okay, thanks for making me feel guilty about imagining death scenarios! He had tried giving the dog to his sister in the country, but he just wailed non-stop. We said that if the dog continues to bark, we will buy one of those shock collars, and he said they would try that. But I guess they have been home more regularly, because it has barked hardly at all. (thank god). I guess I am just used to our dogs, who had a barking rate of 1 bpa (bark per annum).
As far as our neighbor is concerned, I feel bad asking her to turn down her TV as well. She is most likely a little hard of hearing and has been nice to us (collecting our mail when we were on vacation and the box was overflowing).
And one final thing I hate are those cell phone/MP3 players. Mainly because teenagers get on the bus/metro and feel like EVERYONE needs to hear "loosen up my buttons uh-huh" for the millionth time. Hey buddy, I don't force my musical tastes on you so I would appreciate if you didn't force yours on me. Otherwise I'm gonna start blasting "The Phantom of the Opera" or something else I am sure you will hate.