Learning Russian is not easy, but I am having a lot of fun trying, alternating between youtube tutorials and a couple of textbooks. It is especially fun when textbook writers choose amusing inadvertent phrases to explain things like vowel reduction. I find that sounding out words in Russian is a little bit like "sounding out" music--perhaps a little bit like playing a familiar piece on a new instrument or in a new clef.
My favorite phrase so far comes from The Everything Learning Russian Book by Julia Stakhnevich:
Something which I, of course, am (a crazy vegetarian).