Grow-Light

I was supposed to go bowling with Thomas, Michael, and Michael's host family, who happen to be my fourth host family, but when we got to the bowling arena, the boys announced that they didn't want to go bowling with a bunch of little kids. (Michael's host sister who is eight had some friends with her.)
Instead, the guys decided to help me look for a grow-light. No, I am not growing any plants in my room; it's for me. It may sound stupid, especially for someone like me who is not depression-prone, but for someone (again, like me) who has come from pretty much non-stop sun and eighty degree weather to a cold, gray, and rainy environment, I'll do anything to prevent the winter blues, especially in the fall. Besides, I came to France to have fun and be happy! Note that I said this is a preventitive measure; I'm not actually feeling down-in-the-dumps and I hope to keep it that way.
So, we went into a giant Home Depot type store, but nobody there could help us, and we couldn't find it ourselves. For the time being, we gave up on the grow-light and decided to walk around Auchan, a Wal-Mart sort of store, and apparently the biggest Auchan in the world, or at least in France. There, I bought a cool fountain-type pen and sixty ink cartridges to go in it, shampoo, the type of pen that I had when I was five that clicks with four different colors (they're super popular here), colored pencils, and a dinosaur coloring book to occupy my periods of Permanence (when we can't even talk) at school.
We left Auchan and were walking around inside when Thomas said, "Hey, look! Want to go pet some puppies?" I think Michael predicted my reaction because he groaned and gave Thomas a "What were you thinking; we won't leave that store for a year" look. I was overjoyed, at least! I love puppies! After fifteen minutes or so, the guys ditched me and went outside, expecting, I'm sure, that I would follow them shortly after. I didn't. Instead, I went upstairs and looked at the fish. When they joined me a few minutes later, we saw the lizards and figured that a light for a lizard would probably suffice or work even better than one for plants. The man who was trying to sell it to us kept asking us for what type of plant we were using it, so he could get us the right one; consequently, we had a long period of awkardness trying to figure out how to explain that it wasn't for a plant. In the end, I think I bought the right product, a 75 W Basking Spot Lamp, because on the back it reads, "Stimulates natural behavior through UVA rays."
We drove back to Emily (Michael's host-sister)'s friends' house where we ate Babka and Pain-Sec, two Polish cakes that were delicious! The former tastes like pound cake and the latter like apricot pie.