Happy New Year!

As I sit at a table in front of "Wok and Roll" in the JFK airport the last couple of hours of 2013 slip away.  The year started on the roof of a random apartment complex on an island in Thailand with shrapnel from the surrounding fireworks spraying me in the face.  It was a year of bungee jumps, tropical islands, and long flights; of preaching in prison cells, evangelizing on street corners, and cooking for orphans; of redefining what it means to be Brant Copen, what it means to live life.  The man who stared out over a sea of fireworks with his toes hung over the edge of the 17 story roof is not the same man who now sits staring out over the security checkpoint in terminal 1. 

Dodging the shrapnel in Phuket, Thailand 

Today I probably touched more people than any other day this year as I wandered around New York City; excusing my way through the subway stations, pushing to the front of crosswalks in Times Square, squeezing my shoulder between the tourists in order to get a picture of the ice rink in front of the Rockefeller Building.  However, I was also more alone than any other day (with the lone exception of course of my little hermitage into the Superstition Wilderness).   Yesterday I left my family at the bus station in Ohio in order to travel back to my family in southern Spain; however, it will be a full week before I reach my destination.  Today was the first of several days I will be absent from family and though I enjoyed the excitement today in the frigid city air, most of my thoughts were shadowed with a desire to be sharing the experience with someone close to me. 

The fruit of my hard Asian-shoulder-pushing work

I was not alone on that rooftop in Thailand.  There were fourteen men lined up Oohing and Aahing at the fireworks like seven year olds.  Those men would become as close as brothers throughout the rest of the year and two of them, along with five women who were absent at the time, shared almost every minute of the first seven months of 2013 with me on my World Race team.  They know all my habits, all my moods, all my good and bad qualities, all my over-told stories, and exactly what I'm thinking just by my facial expression.  They cried with me, screamed in terror, laughed until their sides hurt, and listened with empathetic faces.  They are my family and I love and miss them. 

My World Race family with our host family in Masai Land, Kenya

The two months I spent in the States this year was hardly a return to every-day life.  I summitted five mountains in new Hampshire, felt the spray of Niagara Falls in New York, splashed in the waves in Florida, and camped on a volcano in Oregon.  All of my adventures were tag-alongs though; I simply followed friends around the US; catching up, sharing stories, and making new memories in the process.  Though it seemed short, and I didn't get to see even some closest to me, those two months were not just a filler between the World Race and G-42, they were two months of family reunions with people I love and miss.  

Birthday in the Presidential Mountain Range on the annual DHMH

Fittingly, the last three months of 2013 have been spent in the romantic country of Spain.  I have danced in Flamenco clubs, got lost on a last minute road trip to Madrid, spent countless evenings watching brilliant sunsets over the Mediterranean, and had my world view rocked in the classroom.  Once again, every moment was shared with my ever expanding family, this time at G-42.  The icing on this 2013 cake was last week, being able to spend a Christmas at home with my Mom, Dad, and siblings; my blood family.  So this year I have changed a lot and experienced much, but it wasn't the exotic locations or adrenaline-filled events that impacted and molded me the most, it was the relationships with the people with which I experienced them.  The people that pushed me outside of my comfort zone, that challenged my narrow-mindedness, that believed in my dreams, that listened to my stories, that acted as Jesus to me when I needed Him most; my family.  Thank you so much for a life changing year. 

- Love Brant

Christmas with the fam - a rousing game of Capitalism