Lets Make Origami

Last weekend I had a trip to Oceanside with my family and a couple of our good friends. Not to be confused with Oceanside, California, Oceanside, Oregon is a tiny coastal town near Tillamook, about 1.5 hours drive from Portland. The town is filled with vacation homes and rentals, and we stayed at one of them. The house was comfortable, dog-friendly, and had ocean view. Highly recommended, if you love to relax in laid-back, quiet beaches. (The house is this one, in case you are wondering.)

Under the beautiful weather we enjoyed strolling down to the beach at low tide for tide pooling, watching paragliders, eating lots of good food and hanging out on the deck.

My dog LOVES running on beach, as you can see. The woman who is hunching back like a grandma is me, beach combing.

There happened to be a paragliding event going on.

My friend found a plastic bottle on the beach. From the bottle cap (AQUARIUS) I identified that it's from Japan.

Barnicles on a rock wall look like reptile skin. It grosses me out. I'm not sure why because I'm not afraid of reptiles.

I painted a sand dollar with pearlescent watercolors. The mussel on the left is unpainted. Have you ever thought that there is a face on a crab shell? I've always thought that. So when I found this crab shell, I enhanced his face with a permanent marker.

A tiny clam shell that I folded out of a silver foil origami paper. The model diagram is from here.

These are over 100 paper cranes made out of recycled magazine paper by the middle school students at my school.  They wanted me to mail them to Students Rebuild for Paper Cranes for Japan project.  According to their website, however, they have already reached their goal of 100,000 paper cranes.  In fact, they have received way more than they asked - 610,351 cranes!  Amazing!  This has also inspired the donor, Bezos Family Foundation to double its initial donation of $200,000 to $400,000 in order to reflect the participants' commitment and support.  How awesome is that!

Now instead of sending the cranes to Students Rebuild, I decided to send them to another donor that matches donation to every crane made.  Osh Kosh B'gosh, the children's clothing company will donate a piece of clothing for every paper crane they receive, up to 50,000.  Here is the details of this project.

I just read a Japanese news article about a group of 27 evacuee children making paper cranes at an evacuation center.  It's in Japanese but there is a small photo.  Here is the link.

Their goal is to make 10,000 paper cranes, with a wish to overcome this disaster.  Their school principal suggested doing this, hoping that it will bring them a project to take on and a sense of coming together.  They don't have access to origami papers, so they are folding out of newspaper cutouts.  Older evacuees and volunteers joined to help, and so far they have made 3,200.

An 8-year-old boy said his house and toys got swept away but wants to go home so he is folding.  A 6-year-old girl, who is about to enter grade school and lost her older brother by the tsunami, said she lost her brand new school bag, so she is wishing it to be back.  They are working hard with their little hands.

I hope they will get their wishes soon!