pinky promises and tide to go

So the last couple of days have been good. On Thursday we had a "family" dinner. Sophie (the French student staying here as well), Madame Bechaux and I all had dinner together and we had a good cheese, squash, ham casserole which was strange but good. At dinner we talked about the French soccer team, Zenadine Zedane (sp?) and somehow the conversation turned to the french version of "cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye" so I taught Sophie and Madame that and then we started talking about pinky promises which was interesting to explain. It was fun but they were like "what's the significance of that?" so I had to explain that to a young child it was an unbreakable promise. It was very amusing. 

Then yesterday at dinner my host mom and I were talking and she was like "oh no I spilled" and I had just come back from school and had my purse with me downstairs and I got tide to go out and gave it to her and she thought it was the most amazing thing in the world. She asked if someone in the US would be willing to buy one and mail it to her and she'd give them money. Once I explained to her that I had another one and she could keep the one I was holding she got really excited and was like "oh show me how it works", etc. And she got all excited and was like "I'm going to show my friends this, France should do this, etc". hahaha.

Today I slept in which was really nice. When I got up, I cleaned my room and sorted through papers then I went downstairs and read my book for like 45 minutes in her garden and she came out and joined me which was nice. At 12:30 I met my friends at IES and we walked to the Monoprix (like Freddies/Target) to get lunch and then we picnicked at le jardin de plantes, a really pretty garden in Nantes :-) After that we explored around and took lots of pictures, then we went to Carrefour to get school supplies and while we were at the mall I got a pair of really cute earrings. Now I have a little bit of time to myself before I meet my friends at Place Royale for dinner :-) 

Overall I'm having a good time, although the past couple of days I've been homesick -- I think it's because I haven't been quite as busy so I've had more time to think about it. Ooooh and on Friday I picked my classes - I tested into the middle level grammar class which I'm happy about. I'm also taking Sociology (7:45am monday morning blech!! but other than that I'm excited about it), a translation class at Universite de Nantes (French-English, English-French), French Writers and Foreign Nations and a Phonetics and Conversation class to improve my accent and ability to converse (in case that wasn't obvious from the title, haha). Anyway I miss you all!! I'll try to post some more pictures soon!