The first thing I would recommend is to second everyone's recommendation of getting dual's of the planswalkers to get a better feel for the basics.
After that the most important thing to remember is that magic is not really one game, but many games with a common framework. What I mean by that is that how you deiced to play is up to you, and to some extent who you find to play with, between what kind of decks you make to how seriously you take it and how much money you want to spend on it. Their is also a variety of different formats to play both in tournaments, and casually.
If after you are comfortable with the game you don't have a group of friends to play with I would try going to one of the drafts recommended above if you have one with a lot of people, around twenty than you should find people of every type. if all you local ones are smaller you may have to wait for a prerelease tournaments,about another 3 months since you just missed one to find a larger variety of people. once you do so talk to them and see what they think of the game and just if they are cool people and just start hanging out with the people you agree with more while their.