next report   June 11 Goodbye to luxury, hello to Patagonia     Today (Sunday, June 11) we said goodbye to our luxury living at La Casa de Maria in Montecito. We were met in the morning by Rebecca, who had in a sense provided breakfast with leftovers from the night before, and our acupuncture friend who came to give Ani Pachen one more treatment for her ankle.   We didn't make it out of the dormitory until about 9 a.m. (our usual time to start walking) because it takes a while to move so many people out of such a large place. And we still had to go by the office to say goodbye to our wonderful hosts.   Our tradition is to give small Tara statuettes and a card signed by everyone to our hosts as a thank you. And, at sort of the last minute I had the idea to give 21 to the people who had provided us with our most wonderful housing yet. This is a significant number because it relates to the number of Taras­a diety that brings blessings of good fortune­that there are in Tibetan Buddhism. So 20 of us filed into an office/conference room in the main building, each placing one Tara on a khata -covered tray. Larry Gerstein, our president, burned incense to purify the room and then our Monks and Nuns led us in an empowerment prayer. Our hosts, as well as the walkers, all felt the power of the prayer fill the room. It was a wonderful way to say goodbye. We continued walking on 101 along the ocean and even saw a few more dolphins. Our numbers reached into the 20s as a result of the great support we got in Santa Barbara. The North Leg of the March for Tibet's Independence has quite often followed along some of the most beautiful stretches of Pacific coastline. We are very lucky. Another really exciting thing that happened though was the strong connection that we made with Patagonia­a rather large outdoor colthing company based in Ventura. A local supporter named Wayne had suggested that we try to pull together a last minute program at their location, because we didn't have any set up Ventura. We finished walking in downtown Ventura, just a few blocks away from our next housing location­the Ventura United Methodist Church. This would be probably the largest church we had stayed in yet. There were two really cool things about this church. First, it had showers. And, second, it had an indoor basketball court, which we took full advantage of daily. Representatives from the Tibetan Association of Southern California brought us dinner that evening, which we welcomed with open arms­and mouths. After dinner a very helpful guy named Ted working in the retail side of Patagonia came over with a slide show from his trip to Tibet. He even had pictures from Yishe's monastery. It was incredible to have Yishe stand in the front and describe his experiences and the different buildings of the monastery. It was sad to see all of the destruction that remained.
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