If you ever doubt how magical this world is, one day you will decide to go to a World Cup watch party in Oakland that you found online to root for a country where you spent two years trying to coax English out of the mouths of Cape Verdean teenagers. 1/7
And at the watch party you will ask the organizer if he’s from Cape Verde. He will say yes, from Praia. And you’ll say oh! I lived there for two years. I was a teacher. And he will ask, “What’s your name?” You will tell him and he will say, “You were my teacher.” 
And across 30+ years and 6,000 miles you will hug a now man who tried to find you and remembered the songs you taught him and his classmates and he will apologize for how badly behaved they all were. And you will laugh and try not to cry and gape in wonder at at this crazy world.
You will remember how much you love the World Cup. And what the Peace Corps meant to you. What those students, 40 to a class with no glass on the windows, meant to you.
Ivan, the grown man with a touch of grey in his beard, will tell you later he has struggled to describe what it meant to him to meet again - that he shared our photo with classmates. And when he returns from watching the Cabo Verde game, we will try to find the words together.
And then you read that the US House of Representatives will vote a day before that game on an amendment to eliminate the Peace Corps, which costs 1/6 the price of the Tomahawk missiles the US used in the war on Iran.
And you wonder: How much is a magical world worth?
@PeaceCorps @RepScottPerry @rpcvw @KQEDnews @KQEDForum @RepJeffries @RepGaramendi
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