I started with the hand tut on the free section...
little difficult at some times but after alot of watching and posting on this forum I managed to apply the technics from that tut to other stuff...of course after that your not done but you will pretty much get the picture how maya works...

but I would agree what rotbol said....browsing trough the helpfiles will help you very much...

hope to see you 2 soon back on this forum