My first experience with SL

Well, I created my avatar - Almenah Telling almost a year ago now. My colleague and I were developing an MSc to be delivered on line and wanted to look at SL as a space for potential teaching areas - or if not then certainly for a graduation ceremony for our students. It was my colleague who introduced me to SL - she had heard of it but not joined so we registered at the same time.
Registering was relatively painless - although choosing a name was harder than I thought - I chose an old family christian name (Almenah) as I had been researching my family tree about the same time and it was fresh in my mind. I have chosen a rather conservative look for myself and am still not confident in changing my appearance - my friend was more adventurous but ended up wearing a box and didn't know how to change it - so I have yet to experiment.
I arrived in orientation island and practiced moving around - with similar experiences that others have talked about - bumping into people, and finding maps etc difficult to read - but this didn't take too long. Realising that I could walk through water, fall off high things etc and still get up was strange. Have you seen this youtube video? A very real representation of my first steps!!
I must admit to not making the most of orientation and I was soon searching and teleporting to other areas - trying to keep to educational areas - but not always suceeding - and there are a number of areas that can be rather shocking to see at first.
I ahve tried to find freebies, win money etc but have not been successful, I have, however, sat in a flying sleigh with santa, ice skated, eaten a roast dinner and met my friend for a coffee.
I left Almenah for quite a few months as other things took precedence - but I am really enjoying the opportunity to ressurect her and find my way around with the support and guidance of people who know what they are doing.

Just as a quick addition - I have just attended my first meeting in SL - I have discussed painting, calculus and tap dancing with people from Venezuela, Belgium, Portugal and Reading - how surreal is that! Oh, and for some reason I appeared to have a ghostly spectre sitting next to me - but apparently that was a settings problem - I wonder if SL has hauntings?