le mot "théine"

A few short stories today....


I drink a fair amount of coffee and tea, so I thought I was pretty familiar with what they contain and their respective effects.  A few weeks ago, someone said that they didn't want to have any tea after dinner because of the théine in it, and they didn't want to stay awake.  I had never heard of this before, but it makes sense.  Actually, it almost makes more sense in French than English.  There is caféine in café, there is théine in thé, and there used to be cocaïne in Coca (Cola).


Another interesting term is "classe."  I'm not exactly sure if that's how it's spelled for this meaning, but I'm interpreting it as "classy."  Last week, I told someone I came from Chicago, and they said "Classe."  Today, I presented Thanksgiving to my 8-year-old class....what we eat and what we do to celebrate.  After I presented all the food, a boy raised his hand and said, "Ah, c'est la classe chez toi?"  Which I can only imagine means, "Oh, it's pretty nice there in America, huh?"


Also, in that same class today, a girl raised her and and told on the boy sitting next to her.  "Rebecca, il a dit 'Rebecca, Rebe-caca.' C'est pas bon de dire ca."  (He called you caca.  It's not good to say that.) I laughed... probably not the best response.


The 5-year-olds make me feel like a celebrity.  They see me in the school courtyard during their recess sometimes and run up to me.  It's so cute, because you can tell they want to stay stuff to me, but they can't really say anything in English, so they just run up and say my name and touch me, which is a little strange but really cute.


I think French children have trouble hearing words that are almost the same in French and English.  We played Bingo with colors today in the 5-year-old class.  I would say a color, and there was a little boy who thought every color was orange.  Here is how similar these two words are.  The word is orange in English, and the word is orange in French.  They are pronounce differently, but they are still really close.  Anyway, it was funny because the exchange went like this (French in italics):
Me calling out Bingo colors: Red!
Boy to his friend: Oh, it's orange! Orange!
Me: No.  That's orange.  Next, green!
Boy to his friend: Orange!
Me: No.  It's... you... orange is orange!