All of it good advice. You may want to try going to a local camera shop that sells used equipment and poking around.
The thing that will teach you the most about photography is using an old fully manual camera. These are also the cheapest
. I used an old Nikon, but Canon makes some good ones too. I would get one of those two if for no other reason than that there will be lots of lenses available for them used. I would start with a 50mm lense to learn on and then move on to other lenses.
When you are first learning, dont use slide film. Its pretty expensive, and keep in mind that you wont get prints back unless you pay extra for them. I would get a good color print film. I used a lot of Fuji Superia 400 when I was learning. Good stuff.
At some point, see if there is any community college or anything around that offers classes in B/W photography. Black and White is a wonderful thing, as is being able to print your own prints, and you will learn a lot from it.