Learning to play the guitar

Since some two and a half years I am trying to learn and play the guitar.
As I mentioned before I am working in a daycare-center for the mentally handicapped and a collegue of mine used to bring her guitar to play and sing and have our clients sing-along.
This turned out to be a smashhit with the clients which then made me decide to have a go at playing the guitar myself.

The consequent endavour proved to be a quitte a struggle at times.
My hands seemed too small to handle the neck of the spanish guitar; being left-handed I was very much in doubt whether to play a right- or lefthanded guitar and while practising I developed a rather annoying pain in the right shoulder which prompted me to turn to AT (Alexandertechnique) for relief. These were but some of the hindrances I came across. Searching the internet on the subject has in the meantime taught me that most people bump into all sorts of obstacles while trying to get some decent sound out of these pretty pieces of wood. And the advice time and again is to persevere as eventually one will overcome most of the difficulties.

I think that the most common and pervasive problem for beginners is how to give the proces of learning to play some sensible direction. That is what and how to learn and practise and how to put that into some repertoire or complete songs.
Now there is a myriad of books, dvd's and internetsites on the market to help you on your way.
One I would certainly recommend from my own experience as standing out among the rest is Mike Herberts site.
His 'strummers videos' are just great for beginners but there are also many fingerpicking jewels for those beyond pure beginners level and Mike has quitte a number of freebies that are very instructive for the real beginner. There is no theory to digest, it is playing right from the start.
Beginners check this out, hope you'll find it as useful as I do.

Dick