My son and I are both hams. For his 10th birthday, he got the ARRL book "Now You're Talking" and we had a father-and-son night at the library once a week for about 5 months and went through the book. He took the Technician test and passed with flying colors.

While the technician rating won't allow you to talk around the world, you may be able to use the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) which connects some 2m and some other frequency repeaters over the internet with each repeater being a "node". I've heard conversations initiated from Scotland and Australia on a local repeater.

Go to http://www.irlp.net/ where you can find a listing of nodes in various cities in the U.S. and countries around the world. Select your frequency, enter the node code, and you're talking around the world. Some repeaters require a special code to initiate a link from their repeater. You may need to join the club in order to get this code.

Good luck

Tirec