I had the opportunity to share with the most incredible people in august of 2010 in the Foreign Correspondents’ Programme (FCP) in Finland, a journalistic experience that became a collage of wonderful memories. As part of the programme I had to write an articl for Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs web page. This is what I wrote.
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Tuve la oportunidad de compartir con personas increibles en agosto de 2010 en Finlandia en el Foreign Correspondent’s Programme, una experiencia periodítica que se convirtió en un collage de memorias maravillosas. Como parte del programa debíamos escribir un artículo para el sitiodel Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Finlandia. El artículo lo escribí directamente en inglés, por lo tanto, lo posteo tal cual acá abajo. En este link hay una nota en el sitio de la embajada de Finlandia en Chile, sobre mi participación en el programa.

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Goodbye Finland – till next time!
By Enrique Núñez Mussa (Chile) 
Foreign Correspondents’ Programme (FCP) in Finland in August 2010 

Pictures/Fotos: Enrique Núñez Mussa.

And they were there. Since the first moment, when our shoes step over Finnish land, leaving the airplanes. They were silent and respectful, they knew exactly what was going to happen, so they just decided to wait and observe.
They saw our first smiles, when everyone said his name to each other, and faces from Facebook started to become real. They also saw when days started to advance and the faces began to become complex and full of details to each other, and that names stop representing only a country, but more important, they started representing human beings, very significant human beings in each other’s life.But they knew something; we were not still able to understand: we were living memories.
That’s why they enjoyed so much some moments they knew were going to become unforgettable. The silence in the middle of nature while a tree was thanking us for a hug he needed in Nuuksio park, sailing again and again in all the possible ships you can imagine over the Baltic Sea, while the wind was joking with us, and Helsinki, appeared at the distance, as a new idea of home, with a sun that was tired as us, after a day of new sensations.
At every lecture, when our faces with a coffee in front became interested or at some moments our imagination flew to another planets while we check the programme for the next days, they were with us, observing behind the window, trying to understand some of our new and fresh Finnish language knowledge, or they became nervous and anxious to be part of the discussion when questions appeared.

When CIMO House became a land without nationality to let in the flavor and traditions of different countries kitchen, they just wanted to jump inside the window, and share the dinner and the conversation where English in different accents, got mixed with our stories and with our ideas of this new place called Finland.
Even, they were watching at us, when we exposed our bodies to the heat of sauna and then to the cold water, with our lungs becoming small and our hearts huge. They laughed with us when we hugged Moomins, and they smiled when they saw our faces in the bus looking through the windows when landscapes or cities as Turku and Naantali passed in front of us.And also, they were there in that moments no one noticed, when we got a sleep in the bus, when we just sit down in front of a landscape in silence, when that song in that particular moment came out of our mp3 player, when we had doubts and expectations travelling alone to the Finnish family that will receive us for a weekend, and when we were alone in our rooms, just realizing at the end of the day that we were not lost in translation anymore and that this life full of new experiences was becoming normal.That’s the reason why they started crying some days before the end. A lot of people told to us that the weather in Finland was particularly good the days of our visit. Here is the explanation, they: The Clouds, were living this experience with us. They were just the same as us: all different, growing, changing, moving to one place to another, mixing themselves, aware that they will never feel the same and be in the same places in that particular moment again. That’s why it started raining. They knew since the first moment that we were going to cry when this experience finished. The last night came and the sky next day was cloudy.
Maybe someday, the sun clears the sky and clouds come together again in the same way in Finland’s sky.