It was a very cerebral University. Even their mascot was the Banana Slug as a joke about Mascots which is really different too. I was attending with Valedictorians of their high schools and other very intelligent people. Almost all people who get bachelors degrees there also get Masters or PHds also at UCSC or somewhere else.
So, in this sense it was a very remarkable experience on many different levels to go to school literally "Among the Redwood Trees" because UCSC is Built in a Redwood Forest for the most part too. So attending this University was remarkable on many different fronts at that time in my life.
At the time my then wife and I were living in Family Student Housing along with 3 of our children there on campus and were interested in trying to keep alive Tibetan Culture because we had spent about 4 months with Tibetan Lamas and Monks from Bodhgaya to Dharamshala to Kathmandu and we felt the Tibetan Culture should be preserved for posterity in some way so it wouldn't disappear from the Chinese overruning the place and trying to wipe out everything to do with genuine Tibetan Buddhist Culture.
We were in India and Nepal from Late December of 1985 until about April of 1986. So, just a few years before we both attended UCSC studying Anthropology we had spent about 4 or 5 months in Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal and had met many many Tibetans and visited Geshe Lobsang Gyatso who we sponsored to return to California where we had met him in Boulder Creek and Santa Cruz where he had come to pray for Lama Yeshe while he passed over and was reincarnated as a Spanish Boy. We also were present for the Stupa Ceremony when the boy returned to where the ashes of his former self Lama Yeshe was in Boulder Creek along with Geshe Lobsang Gyatso and his TRanslator from Darjeeling India who was his nephew then too in 1986. Both Boulder Creek and Santa Cruz are of course right next to UCSC as well.
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