Sesame Street

I got a rather interesting phone call from my supervisor early Saturday morning.

It turns out the foreign affairs police are investigating my school, and because of this, I am being permanently transferred to the branch of our school in the city of Ren De.

Apparantly, I have been (unknown to me) working ilegally at my school (The Sesame Street English school in the city of Guei Ren) - all of the paperwork submitted thusfar to the Taiwanese government says that I am working at the Ren De school, not Guei Ren. The rules regarding working illegally are rather strict here, with instant deportation, high fines and a ban from ever being able to return to Taiwan if caught working illegally, even if they aren't aware of it. So now, as of 2pm Monday, I have to say goodbye to the Guei Ren school (and all of my students) and work out of Ren De.

While Ren De is closer to my apartment than Guei Ren (I drive through Ren De on my way to Guei Ren), I'm a little pissed off at once again being lied to. Since the Ren De school is a lot smaller than Guei Ren, I seriously doubt I can maintain the amount of hours I was working at the Guei Ren school (all 40 hours a month.. eesh). The story continues, but I'm getting a little fed up. More on this bullshit as it develops.

Anyhow, speaking of Sesame Street, I've been doing a little reading on the show. Did you know that Snuffleupagus' first name is Aloysius? Freaky. Oh.. and Big Bird is a Canary.

I also found a bunch of classic Sesame Street clips on Youtube... here's one of my favourites from when I was a kid:



The Pinball number segments were all sung by The Pointer Sisters... another useless chunk of trivia for you :)

I also found the episode where they explain the death of Mr. Hooper to Big Bird... very sad. I was rather young when that happened, considering it was in 1983, but I remember it.

At my school, only a few muppets appear on our Curriculum (mainly in the early stages). Ernie, Bert, Grover, Herry Monster, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Prarie Dawn, Rodeo Rosie, Oscar the Grouch, the Count and Betty Lou play large roles in Stage A. Other characters, such as the Amazing Mumford, Guy Smiley and the Yip-Yips appear maybe once or twice. Newer muppets, such as Elmo and Zoe never appear (our curriculum was developed long before they were popular), but appear in later-produced posters and promotional items. Tingo, a green and purple specially-produced ESL muppet, appears in all of the promotional materials (as well as a specially-produced series of Sesame English ESL videos that we never see), but nowhere else. I had to read about Tingo on a website (so I finally found out what that strange muppet's name is that is all over our school...!) I've asked many people at my school who the strange muppet was, but no one seemed to know. Go figure :)