Ham radio is a fun hobby, there are many ways to enjoy it including talking to people all over the world, from your home or in the car or portable as in out in the boonies. There is a niche for everyones interest whether it be phone operation, morse code, slow scan tv, moon bounce, satellite communications or repeater operations. You can even get software to help with logging your calls or plotting the best way to talk to a certain country from wherever to wherever, or to learn the morse code (no longer a requirement but fun just the same). Anytime there are emergencies anywhere in the world, ham radio is there to provide needed communications.
In the early days of telegraph operators, the very good operators were called 'hams', so the name stuck to amateur radio operators. The goal of the early 'hams' was to build their own equipment and tweek it to get the maximum distance they could. Building your own equipment is another facit of the hobby that requires some electronic knowledge as well as good circuit design. A lot of hams build and test antenna designs to increase their knowledge of radio wave propagation. It's fun to design and build your own radio equipment and antennas. There are some kits available also for those that want to build their equipment but don't have the required design knowledge.
Ham radio equipment is available for varying prices at your local store, on eBay and many places online, both new and used equipment. There is equipment that is affordable for the first time buyer. My first rig was a used one I purchased from a local store that took trade-ins. It worked very well and I talked to Japan, Australia, Antartica, Canada , and many countries in South America, all with very little power and an antenna I built myself from a length of wire a couple of insulators and a pole. Man was it fun. Ham radio is a wonderful hobby for children and adults. There is a lot of Ham Radio Information online, go to your favorite search engine and type in 'ham radio' and you will get a lot of information to get you started.