It was through collecting my "hard earned" satoshis through the faucet I installed on my cheap Android phone back in the day (it was named something like hotBTC or something? the faucet's logo was a flame); withdrawing those few satoshis to my freshly installed and backed-up Mycelium wallet.
Man, those were the days.
The days when you can faucets were giving a lot of bitcoins by today's standards, I am not from the time were faucets give large amounts of bitcoin so I missed out but I imagine those that was able to experience it like you I assume that you probably never expected bitcoin to get to this price. My experience is a bland one as I was still a student when I was introduced to bitcoin and the price was already pretty established so from what I can share is that bitcoin taught me to be smart financially and made me love stuff that's tech related.