ARTS AND CRAFTS

Luis loves to play soccer. And he can spend hours - or even days - with his Lego. We knew that.

But we had no idea that he is also really into handcraft.

This is why we are taken by surprise, when yesterday evening after dinner, Luis grabs a colored sheet of paper and starts to fold it.

He folds and folds, sometimes he stops and looks at it with concentration, he creases something here and creases something there, starts folding again and after a while proudly presents us - this:

Then he asks me: "Mommy, how do you say crane in German ?"

"In German craned means Kranich, Luis. But look at this! That is BEAUTIFUL! Since when do you know how to do Origami?"

Luis explains very nonchalant: "That is something we learned in school."
And then he adds: "If you make 1000 cranes, then a wish comes true."

"But, well, who makes 1000 cranes?" I ask.

"We did. At school. All children from Grade 2 at UNIS Hanoi. And those from the other UNIS school. So we did 500 and the children in New York did the other 500."

I am deeply impressed by such a huge amount of arithmetic knowledge and craft talent. 
And I have to ask him:"What have you done with all those cranes?"

The answer is short: "We have sent them to the UN."  And he shows me how to fold the crane so it better fits into a package.

This time Felix joins the conversation:

"Luis, do you actually know what the UN is?"

Luis looks at both of us. He sighs. And then he answers:

"They make the world a better place."

His answer leaves us a little thoughtful.

We look at each other.

So... self-made cranes and trust in the UN ...

Almost simultaneously we turn to Luis and ask: "Luis, could we also have a sheet of paper?"