The world came to party and we were ready

In June, hundreds of people showed up at a DoubleTree hotel in Lawrence, Kansas, to watch the bus carrying the Algerian soccer team arrive. Lawrence, Kansas is a college town of a hundred thousand people in the middle of the country. The whole town had decided that the Algerians were their team now and intended to make sure they knew it. The Algerians got off the bus to a crowd of cheering strangers. Then they checked in and the hotel gave each of them a warm chocolate chip cookie, because that is what DoubleTree does, and because America. Then when the Algerian team showed up to practice the first day, the University of Kansas band was there and played a perfect rendition of the Algerian national anthem. That was the first video in my feed that reminded me what my country is about. It wasn’t the last, by far. For weeks my social media feeds have been filled with the world discovering the United States, and I have not been able to stop watching. Visitors from Scotland and France and…