On a September afternoon in Viterbo, the air is charged with anticipation. Students line up on one side of a patio, families on the other. The Resident Director begins to call out names, one by one. A student steps forward, and so does a family. Strangers only seconds earlier, they meet in the middle with a hug, a kiss on both cheeks — the bacetto they had practiced minutes before — and their first photograph together. 

This year, the ceremony took place at the Balletti Park Hotel, a fitting location as it is owned by a host mom. That connection added another layer of meaning to a ritual that has opened nearly every year at SYA Italy. The symbolism is powerful: two lives, two worlds, meeting at the center to begin a journey together. 

From that moment forward, what unfolds is more than simply providing a place to stay. Host families are the heart of the SYA experience. They welcome students into the rhythms of daily life — long Sunday lunches, evening walks through town, the sometimes chaotic patterns of family living that leave little room for anonymity. These details may feel ordinary to the families themselves, but for students, they become the texture of belonging. 

For alumna Brittany Toscano Gore IT’02, the impact of her host family still shapes her life more than two decades later. 

Brittany arrived in Viterbo as part of SYA Italy’s inaugural class, just days before September 11, 2001. “Traveling abroad was a milestone, but 9/11 changed everything,” she recalls. “I still remember how disconnected I felt in the immediate aftermath. Yet what I remember the most about those early days is the way the community embraced us. We could barely understand each other, but our host families quickly became more than hosts. They became family.” 

Her own host family, the Profili and Massaro family, redefined what home meant. In Virginia, she was the eldest of three daughters. In Viterbo, she became the youngest of four siblings. Her Italian parents are still “Mamma” and “Papà” to her today, and their children, now parents themselves, remain part of her extended family. Two decades later, the bond came full circle when one of her Italian siblings lived with Brittany’s family for part of her own high school years. 

“They didn’t care about what school I attended or which college I wanted to go to,” Brittany says. “What mattered was me. They generously opened their home and their hearts to me as I navigated this new culture and community.” 

That lesson that home is people, not a place, is echoed by countless SYA alumni. For many, their host families were the steady ground that gave them the courage to step boldly into the unknown. The warmth, the patience and even the gentle corrections of mispronounced words wove students into a fabric of belonging that endures long after the year ends. 

For families, too, the exchange is transformative. Hosting is not simply about welcoming a teenager into one’s home; it is about expanding one’s world, seeing the familiar through new eyes and building a connection that often stretches across continents and decades. 

In Viterbo, it all begins on that patio, with names called aloud and first embraces captured in photographs. But as Brittany and thousands of other alumni can attest, the true story of SYA host families is written in the years that follow — in the laughter, the meals, the bonds that transcend borders and the enduring truth that sometimes, family is chosen. 

Since our founding in 1964, host families have been a vital part of an SYA education — living proof of our mission in action and our vision brought to life. Your belief in this mission, and your support, ensure that students today and tomorrow can experience the lifelong impact of these bonds that turn strangers into family.