France Sent Me an Earthquake This Morning

My new neighbors moved in a few weeks ago. The two good looking, fast talking men my age are cousins. They are originally from West Africa but grew up in Paris. Although we spent one evening getting to know each other, their complete refusal to believe I will not leave my boyfriend for one of them and their intense love of Celine Dion has kept us from becoming friends.
Now, despite the fact that I grew up in this pre-war duplex, the distinct lack of neighbors for 9+ months helped me to forget that there is really no sound insulation between the two sides. So when my neighbors moved in I was shocked. I was shocked about how loud it sounded when they walked up and down the stairs. I was shocked that the French language could be so loud and obnoxious. I was shocked at their bad taste in music and their propensity to foist it upon me at 6:30 every morning. But the most shocking thing of all happened this morning.
I have become accustomed to the wailing noise of bad and usually out of date chick music blasting though my bedroom wall at 6:30 sharp. Usually I roll around and whine about it to my dog for 15 min before giving up and getting into the shower where I will be able to hear a west African man with a French accent singing Brandy’s “I Wanna be Down” in his own shower. Once I get out of the shower I try to ignore the shouting and chatter and door slamming that constitutes their morning routine. We tend to leave the house at the same time. They usually wave at me and then say dirty things to one another about me in French. No I don’t speak French but my best friend took two semesters of it sophomore year of high school and I think that qualifies me enough to know when someone is saying dirty things about me.
But this morning things were different. I woke up at 6:30 and there was no discernable noise at all coming from next door. Great! I thought, now I can go back to sleep and get up at 7 like I am supposed to. So I went back to sleep. Then at 6:48 someone on some soccer team in the world cup made a goal and all hell broke loose. I woke in a panic thinking I was being personally attacked by an earthquake. The whole house was swaying and the noise was deafening. Once I woke up a bit I thought the neighbors were perhaps holding an ultimate Cage Fighter Tournament in their living room. That seemed much more logical to my American mind than the idea that two men could get so worked up over a soccer goal that they literally knocked a picture off the wall in their neighbor’s house. Luckily it was not broken. Not so luckily, the World Cup, I have been told, is not over.