International Students Feel Viterbo’s Hospitality

The Cambridge Dictionary’s website defines hospitality as the act of being friendly and welcoming to guests and visitors. Yet, is this ideal reaching our international students? If so, how do they feel about hospitality?

To find the answer, I sought the counsel of two foreign exchange students, who provided valuable insight into the Viterbo’s spirit of hospitality is put into action.

When I spoke to Christina Repa from Greece, she immediately cited faculty members. “They will always ask me questions—If I’m okay, if I feel homesick or not--and they will always provide me with a hug if I need [it],” explains Repa.

To her, hospitality was about making guests welcome. “If we are hosting someone…we always make sure he has everything he needs. We do whatever we can to make him feel comfortable in our house and our country.”

When asked how Greece conceptualizes hospitality, she used the word “philoxenia.” The term is a combination of two roots: “philo” meaning “friend,” and “xenia” meaning “stranger.” Essentially, to Greek culture, exercising hospitality is turning a stranger into a friend.

This resonated very closely with the words that Alicia Diaz from Puerto Rico used to describe hospitality.

In her native Spanish, “hospitalidad” provides a direct translation, but in her own words, it means “receiving people with open arms; not shutting doors on people just because [one does not] understand them...”

When asked about how Viterbo had shown her hospitality, she replied, “I think it was during my application process…that I first saw it…I talked to Caitlin Locy, and she made it seem like Viterbo was a very homey place.”

By these students’ accounts, it seems clear that hospitality is alive and well. Let us be glad for it, especially as the holiday season approaches.