OAK VIEW : Youth Returns From Costa Rica ‘Inspired’

When Kenn Young stepped off the bus in the Costa Rican city of Manuel Antonio last August, the then 16-year-old Oak View resident had just $650 in his pocket and butterflies in his stomach.

His parents had paid for the air fare and his first month of language school. But the tall, lanky teen-ager with a weakness for rain forests would be on his own for the next 11 months.

The beach was just a short walk from the bus station, however, and one dreamy gaze across a sunset-drenched Pacific later, the butterflies quit their fluttering.

“It was the tropical paradise I imagined it would be,” Kenn said. “The moisture in the air. Hills covered with trees. And wildlife all around me.

“It put me right at ease.”

And so as his friends at the Thacher School in Ojai trudged through a junior year filled with pre-calculus, chemistry and American history, Kenn stood at the base of a gurgling volcano, marveled at monkeys swinging about a rain forest and learned to craft a guitar from a stack of lumber.

And he discovered what it is like to be responsible for his own actions and livelihood. To be an adult.

He found work, paid rent and came back in one piece.

“People think it takes a lot of guts to do what I did,” said Kenn, who returned from Costa Rica this week. “But it wasn’t like that. It just seemed like a lot of fun and like I’d learn more than in the classroom. It wasn’t about being scary. It was about being on my own and paying my own way.”

The concept of delaying his junior year for a year of adventure began bouncing around inside Kenn’s teen-age cranium after he listened to a presentation in school about finding jobs abroad.

After months of surfing the Internet and reading travel books for job listings, Kenn took the plunge. A hotel specializing in eco-tourism said it might have a job but wanted to interview him first.

So Kenn left the cozy confines of his suburban bedroom--where he had plastered the walls with magazine cutouts of tropical animals--to sleep in the remote highlands of Costa Rica after a month of language school.

He worked at the hotel until February, when he traveled to the Costa Rican capital of San Jose to take courses at the university. He studied psychology, biology and even philosophy.

“I was nearly fluent in Spanish, but philosophy was definitely a challenge,” he said. He worked in a music store and spent his Saturdays learning to build guitars from scratch.

Now he is home again, doing chores around his parents’ home and gearing up for junior year. “I feel a lot more confident about myself now,” he said. “School always seemed monotonous, but now I’m really inspired to learn.”