@phillipa you need to buy steem and them power it up
or you can trade other crypto for steem power in an exchange and then add it to your account. If you want to buy ETH I recommend @coinbase is website and add to buy bitcoin, ether & litecoi. Once you buy any other crypto you can use @blocktrades to buy steem or steem power for your account.
That's the problem, coinbase is not avaliable in my country. Just made a post about it today, you can read it here.
U can use http://openledger.io ! it has almost every coin poloniex has and its decetralized and so its available in every country period!
u can use it to buy nd sell bitcoin or ethereum or bitsars or many other altcoins for steem or SBD
also yes blocktrades.us lets u convrt the ethereum to steem
also u can use my new website http://www.localaltcoins.co pwered by steemit and post a trade asking f someone will trade you steem or steempower directly for ethereum! it is a cool method i made to help stemit users trade with each other!
DONT worry u got this!
once u do a few things on steemiit u will not forget! its easy and u will be able to help others soon!