Since you claim to be a newbie, I'll try to be thourough about explaining stuff. Sorry if I insult your intelligence or something

Sounds to me that what you need is a Round-the-World-ticket (RTW). Each of the 3 airline alliances (Star Alliance, SkyTeam, Oneworld) offer this type of ticket. You can create your preferred itinereary at the respective alliances' websites and display the associated price (admittedly, I've only tried it thoroughly with Star Alliance myself). The benefits of an RTW-ticket is that it allows you to travel far with a lot of stops at an affordable price. Also, the extra cost for premium classes is smaller than for regular tickets.
There are many tricks associated with getting the RTWs as cheap as possible, such as starting your itinerary from specific countries/regions, and you need to decide wich alliance offer the RTW-ticket that best suits your needs. You should be able to get good advice on your choice from this forum.

And another thing: You should end up with a pleasant number of miles in your account afterwards. You can put miles earned on board an airline in the Frequent Flyer Program (FFP) of any airline in the same alliance. Every program have different conditions you need to consider when choosing which one to put your miles in. A US one will be a good idea if you think of getting a credit card at some time. Again, this forum is an excellent resource for advice.

If you're not familiar with the concept of airline alliances, start with Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_alliances
Wikipedia also lists which airlines are in which alliance.