i'm new too. here's my plan: accumulate some bitcoins in a wallet on my phone to start with, then after it becomes more than i would carry in cash worry about setting up a second wallet offline to send them to.
do you have an android phone?
https://market.android.com/details?id=de.schildbach.walletyou run the app, generate a wallet, and have people send bitcoins to the address. they should show up. it's that simple.
the hard part is convincing someone to send you bitcoins.