ELEVEN!

yesterday evening, i had dinner with luna and paula, our two spanish group organizers, and sean and tyler, two of the guys from our uni group. we were eating dinner and luna's place and i asked the girls about sesame street, if they watched it when they were young. in spain it's called barrio sesamo. we started talking about it, and i learned the names of characters, like grover in spain is called coco, and they knew the skit where he teaches kids about near and far. how cool is that? they had some of the same skits here in spain, and probably in all the other countries that showed sesame street, as they did in america. other characters, kermit the frog = la rana gustavo, cookie monster = triqui, ernie and bert = epi y blas, grover = coco (and obviously, supergrover = supercoco) and, ready? guy smiley = pepe sonrisas. i almost wish i had grown up watching the spanish version. so anyway, we're talking about different characters and skits, and out of nowhere paula starts singing, "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce". yes. they both knew the pinball skit. the skit where a pinball bounces around the coolest pinball machine you could ever imagination whilst a song plays in the background, singing the numbers one through twelve. the melody during the 1-12 is one of the most indelible memories i have from my childhood. and outside of my family, i've met a total of like three people who know about the pinball sketch, so it was great to meet someone from a different country who knew that from their childhood too.

i gotta say though, hearing the girls sing it, and after seeing the video you're about to see, the spanish one through twelve has so much less rhythm than the english one through twelve. i don't want to sound arrogant, but it just sounds so much better/cooler in english than in spanish. but here is the spanish version anyway. it's not the best quality, just ignore the names of the numbers that pop up, those are obnoxious and weren't in the skit originally. just focus on the song.



ok now check this out. the real thing.



one of my all time favorite sesame street sketches. it was just cool to find out they had it in another country too. that's all.

-jon