It’s not.
“Hey, look at that girl/car/tree/Chihuahua” isn’t a left nod. It’s eye contact, then you look at the thing.
“Come here/go there, let’s talk” isn’t a right nod. It’s a weird neck movement where your head is kind of sideways and you’re nodding in the direction of the place you want them to go. You usually use “Hey, look at that tree” first before you try to get them to go to the tree to talk.
Can confirm up and down are correct enough, though. Up is for people you know, down is for people you don’t.
Any soup is cool enough to eat on a first date. If your date gives you crap about something as inconsequential as what kind of soup you’re eating, your date should be discarded at your earliest convenience, because they have shown themselves to be an opinionated twat that will bitch about things that don’t matter in the slightest.