I think as others have said, focus on your education. Now is not the time to roam the world looking for ways to support yourself. You're 19 and don't have that luxury at this time unless you're already aware of what you're good at and that happens to be a skill that is in high demand or you're the rare entreprenurial type who can make things happen for yourself.
After you finish college and have some sort of backgound that you can branch out from your odds of being successful outside of your home country will be much greater. Don't think for a minute that all other countries in the world will be as receptive towards young US citizens attempting to "escapse" from the economy (or whatever) as the US has hitorically been to the citizens of other nations.
Case in point. Here in the Cayman Islands, back in the 1970s before the place was really deicsovered by the tourism world, before we became an international banking center, and while the place was still infested with hordes of mosquitoes, practically anyone could come here - education or no education - skills or no skills. What's more, in those times, someone would become a permanant resident or get their Caymanian "status" (kind of like becoming a citizen but not quite) in less than 5 years. Now the wait is 15 years at minimum and more like 25 years for most people.
Of course, Cayman is just a small dot on the map. But what it suggests is that even though it's possible to travel pretty much anywhere in the world on a US passport, that doesn't gaurantee that the places you might wander to will have any particular interest or need in inviting you to stay for long. You will have to get a work permit, and if based on your education and experience you don't really offer much more than thousands of locals do, then what is their incentive to pave an easy path for you? Much different if you enter that same country as a qualified professional in an area they have a shartage of locally qualified people to choose from.
So I think your idea is a good one but probably premature based on where you're at in life. And yes, I do think that your parents would be rather unhappy if you abandoned your college studies to go find yourself at this point. I'm not saying you wouldn't be successful in doing so, but odds are that you would end up right where you started several years later and then be reentering an undergraduate degree program at age 22 or 26 or 31 and with far more responsibilities and far less time than you have on your hands now.
I'm one of 6 kids in my family, and my parents were certainly "old school" so this may not apply to your case. But I can say with absolute certainty that if any of us had dropped out of college to "wander" (which I personally think is a great thing to do at some point in life), there is no way that there would have been a support net for us. About the only thing they would have allowed us to do would be to more back home for a very short period of time (and pay rent) while attempting to get back on our feet. But whatever little financial support they could have provided in terms of assisting us with our educaiton would have gone to one of the other kids who "needed it more" (as my dad would have said). But again, that's old school and very conservative thinking. Neither of my parents ever did anything to prevent us from doing what we wanted to do, but they didn't necessarily support it all. I think this is something to think about in your decision making process because your actions have implications for other people in your life who care about you. It could turn out to be wonderful, but if it doesn't don't blame anyone but yourself and live with whatever consequences result.
