Thank you for your response. It is appreciated .

In a perfect world I would have a social circle that contained someone who owned bitcoins. Sadly, I don't.  That would definitely be my preferred method of getting a few dollars worth...meeting in person and exchanging in person.

I will look into the above mentioned exchanges and try to find out what the fees would be. Hopefully I won't be confronted with too many barriers. 

At some point I'd like to try my hand at trading/exchanging between coins, but there are soooo many freaking barriers right now. It's definitely not an easy process for someone who only has an iPhone to work off of. Damn this poverty!  Come on Crypto-world...show me the way. Make me rich.

Ha!  Yeah right. I'd settle for status quo...a level up from poverty....