Toby says: It was really sad. Sadako was a little girl, and she had to go to the doctors. She had leukaemia from the atom bomb. She was folding a thousand paper cranes so that she could get better again, but she actually died. I liked the book, it was a sad book, though. There is a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan.

Mummy says: This was another book that had stayed with me since childhood, and as a result of it, I have been folding paper cranes - out of receipts in restaurants, scraps of paper while we wait somewhere...Toby had been playing with these since he was tiny, and I always told him that I learnt how to fold them because of a book I'd read as a child. What I didn't realise was one important change the author made - when we researched the book, it turned out that Sadako actually managed to fold a thousand paper cranes, but died anyway. In the book, she falls short of her target, and her class mates finish the remaining cranes, so that she gets buried with a thousand paper cranes. 

Of course, we had to have a go at making a paper crane. With a bit of help, this is Toby's first one :)

Toby says: The Big Wave was about scariness, happiness and sadness. There was a little boy called Kino and his friend Jiya. They lived on a volcano by the sea. One day, a big wave came and smashed people's houses, and people died. Jiya's Mum, Dad and brother died, so Jiya went to live in Kino's house. The boys were happy before the big wave came, but then came the big wave and they were sad.  Sometimes, things are scary, but you still do them. Sometimes, even just living can be scary, but if you have friends, then you might not be so scared, but you might still be a bit scared. 

Mummy says: This is a beautifully written story about friendship through hardship. It explores grief and sadness, and although it is short and covers quite a bit of ground, it reads very calm and "quiet". A lovely find, and I'm sure we'll return to it.

Kung told us about Loy Krathong, a Thai festival that is celebrated in November. For Loy Krathong, people build a krathong - a floating flower display with a candle and joss sticks, which then gets to float away, taking all worries and bad luck with it.

Toby loves anything crafty, and with the nights getting longer, the idea of playing with light sounded lovely, too, so we decided to build our own krathong. Traditionally, the base is made from a slice of a banana tree or bread - we decided to use some flower "oasis" (squishy green stuff for flower arrangements), wrapped in cling film. The base gets covered in banana leaf, and then flowers get arranged on top. Ours is not as professional as those we found online, but we had great fun making it. Toby wanted to include some autumn leaves, so we had a whole row of them. Because it is very windy right now here where we live, we decided to put some giant sparklers on, rather than a candle, which would have lasted about half a second.

I've been sharing some of our experiences with friends and family since the project has started, but as the project grows, more and more people we have never met are taking an interest, and so I thought I would start a blog to tell you a bit more about the project as it happens. I won't promise to blog every day, but let's see what happens.

A side effect of the project is that Toby is becoming far more interested in food from different cultures, this became apparent big time when we made pierogi last week, prior to writing to our letter to Poland. Since then, we have also found an Asian supermarket in York, where we explored jackfruit chips from Vietnam, and "umbrella cookies" from Taiwan.  Yesterday, we wrote to Eritrea, and our country research introduced us to "injera", which is made from "teff" - I have to admit that I had heard of neither, so I'm the first to admit that I have a lot to learn about the world, too! We'll be sharing pictures of our own creation once the teff flour has arrived (yes, we did order some!), until then, here's a picture from "antanukai" (shared via Flickr under Creative Commons License: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21723018@N07/)