Will Stubblebine:  

We moved from Oregon to Mill Valley, California when I was 5. I entered kindergarten at the brand new Strawberry Point School and was in the first class that went K thru 6. I was interested in microscopes, science, and bugs. A friend and I used to go out beyond the playground and catch black widows with test tubes and corks. Back in the classroom we studied them in science class. A particularly formative year was the third grade ¿ not in school, but in Sunday School at the Unitarian Fellowship of Marin. This was a year in which we studied comparative religion and visited several different places of worship of religions from around the world. It was the variety of the different ways being that grabbed my interest. From that time on I have been interested in the very different ways that people around the world deal with the same basic problems of life. Then it was on to jr high at Edna Maguire in Mill Valley for 2 years. I was still interested in science, but added an interest in music. I studied the clarinet and started going to the San Francisco Symphony. I came to love the Symphony and still do. The next four years at Tamalpais High School were good. I made a number of good friends, continued with science, participated in sports, and played the baritone saxophone in the concert band. It was the band that did the most to hold my head together through high school. In the middle of my jr year at Tam a teacher who had just returned from Europe gave a talk to our history class about his recent experiences. He focused on a theme I had encountered before: the remarkable variety of ways of being. I decided to spend a year in Europe between high school and college. I started saving money and making plans. The year in Europe started with a tour of high school students from Tam another nearby high school. This fine group of students included my brother, Paul. It was grueling trip and I believe we saw every painting, statue and historical building in Europe. After the tour I went to Spain. I had carried my camera and an underwater camera housing all over Europe with the intentions of making my way to the Red Sea. I didn¿t make it that year, but it still remains a goal. Instead I went to the Mediterranean Sea where I had heard of a British company that provided scuba excursions. They were in a small fishing - turned tourist village on the Costa Brava named Tamariu. I dove with them for a week before they offered me a job. The next two months were spent teaching SCUBA and water skiing in Tamariu having the time of my life. In October I was off to the town of Blaubeuren near Ulm in Germany where I studied German at the Goethe Institute. I made some good friends and enjoyed being in a setting with students from all corners of the world. The course finished in December when two of these students and I set out on another tour of Europe. This time we went by car and stayed with families. It was a different experience from the previous cultural tour. I especially liked the families in eastern Czechoslovakia and Poland. German was a good language for this region and being able to talk with locals was fascinating. Then I worked in print shop that was part of a men¿s clothing factory in Munich. This was a way of practicing German, but again being able to talk with the people around me was the most interesting part of these three months. The same two students and I set out on another tour of Europe by car. We went to different places except for the families in Czechoslovakia where we spent Easter. In the spring I returned to Mill Valley and started school in the fall at UCSC. The first year I stu...Expand for more