A few years ago, I met a group of teens in Hong Kong who needed a bit of encouragement to spend more time reading and speaking English.

One thing about this group (other than being a great set of kids) is that they LOVED finding out more about the world. None of them had travelled, some of them had never even been to Hong Kong Island from their homes in the New Territories. But they couldn’t get enough of stories and pictures of other places. They wanted to explore the whole world.

I remembered a story from a friend who’d been in the navy. The night before deployment, they’d do a run through a random suburb and steal someone’s garden gnome. The household would then get postcards from their gnome wherever the ship made port, and at the end of the voyage, it would be returned to the house, with a silly souvenir by its side.

Now I wasn’t about to abscond with gnomes, but I did have a very small toy dragon, and friends who frequently jumped on planes to all sorts of places.

And that’s how George became a world traveller. He’s been to the Himalayas, Sri Lanka, country Western Australia, Wales, Monte Carlo, San Francisco, Dubai, and so many more. I hope you enjoy sharing his adventures over on Facebook. I’m hoping to transfer some of the highlights to this site at least, but it’s going to take a while…