I Wanted to See What Life Was Like Around the World, So I Logged into Steam

by Danny Johnson, Age 11

My teachers say that I should travel the world and experience new cultures. My dad always replies that I can experience new cultures by talking a walk around the neighborhood. Then he grumbles something mean about immigrants.

My dad says the only way I can travel the world for free is if they draft me to fight the Charlies in Vietnam. I don’t know who Charlie is, but I do know another way to visit the world for free. I use a very cool and new travel app: Steam!

Logging into Steam, I was immediately taken to a far and distant land: London, England. “Londoners,” as they call themselves, live a life much differently from mine. They add more u’s to their words. They don’t have a President, but a Prime Minister, whose job is to spy on their Internet. Finally, they don’t use dollars, but a different currency, called “pounds.”

The account I visited had 40 pounds, which is almost $60! However, after a few minutes, it suddenly turned into £0. In fact, this happened for every account I visited!

Weird!

After a while, I got bored of London, so I refreshed the page. I visited lots and lots of new places. The languages and the money changed all the time! It was so cool! The best part was, the credit card number changed every time too. I wrote down the number each time so I could find a pattern, and later I showed it to my dad. He was so proud of me!

Finally, I even made a pen pal. His name is Yuri, and he is from Volgograd, Russia. He found my email after using Steam, and he sent me a nice email.

I love traveling the world, and I’m glad I was able to meet so many cool people and their accounts. Thanks Valve for storing this information in their cash. I’d give Valve more cash so they can store more accounts, but as you see, Yuri already took all of it! LOL!