Stephen Cuffey

I was given the wonderful opportunity to visit the ancient and magical city of Rome during the Christmas holidays. After celebrating Christmas eve and day up in Prague with some fellow ESI teachers and a couple of their families, Ben and I flew out to spend some much needed time doing something other than teaching. While it was in no way restful or relaxing, it gave us a little break from the everyday teaching grind. The trip was filled to the brim attempting to see everything that Rome had to offer. And this despite the fact that it rained every single day we were there, soaking us to the core, yet we refused to give up. Our vacations are not for the faint of heart, or for those that melt in the rain. We arrived the 26th of December and stayed downtown in a hostel (M&J's hostel) until leaving on the 1st of January. We met up with some friends from IU, Lindsay and Katie (Katie lives in Rome and works with Campus Crusade for Christ), and a friend of Lindsay's named Christy (who also went to IU). Throughout our stay in Rome we visited and toured many traditional tourist sites- the Roman Forum, the Colloseum, the Parthenon, the Vatican museum, St. Peter's Basilica, Castel Sant Angelo, the Ancient Appian Way. We also took out a day and visited the ruins of an old Roman town named Ostia Antica. If you are ever in Rome, I highly recommend the visit of Ostia. It is the ruins of an entire town, with seemingly more of it intact than the Roman Forum, although probably not as historically significant as the Roman Forum. Either way, it is amazing. After ringing in the New Years with a horde of Italians and other tourists, Ben and I flew back to the Czech Republic on the 1st to start school on the 3rd of January. The pictures below are selected pictures from my camera. I will put up more pictures as soon as I can steal some from the others in the group. Many of the pictures with just me in it will all have me at a similar angle with something behind me. I took all of those with my left hand. Just to explain the similarity. So enjoy this sampling of my vacation...