Learning Finnish is Difficult / Vaikea

I have been taking Finnish lessons for 3 months now.  And although I have a vocabulary of maybe a few hundred Finnish words, when it comes time to assemble them into sentences my brain fully locks up.  I'm also incapable of listening and understanding what is being said.  .

For example, today in class the teacher was introducing us to the words for professions.  And when she told us the word for hairdresser, she decided to illustrate with a little personal story.  She told the entire story in Finnish (but very slowly and used lots of pantomime).  I thought I was following along okay.  I certainly didn't get all of what she was saying, but I felt I got the general idea, which I thought was:

Her hairdresser has a little 7 year old girl who hangs out in the salon.  And when my teacher goes in for her hair appointments, the little girl wants to play house.  The little girl plays the mother, the hairdresser plays the father, and my teacher plays the daughter.  Then while the hairdresser is doing my teacher's hair, my teacher brushes the little girl's hair.

After she finished the story, she asked us how much we understood, and then summarized the story in English, which was:

She has been friends with her hairdresser since she was seven years old.  They used to play house, and he would always want to brush her hair.

Sigh...  Not even CLOSE.  I managed to introduce a whole character into the story who wasn't even there!

Earlier today, I was testing my Finnish chops over IM with my friend.  That, too, was a disaster:

sakke: yo haleemeister
halee: tervehdys, herr sakke
sakke: :)
sakke: excellent! (just add an "a" to the end of herr)
halee: so you mean, "excellent...but wrong"
halee: suomea on vaikeaaaaaaaaaaaa
sakke: awesome! (but it's "suomi" sorry...:)
halee: i quit.
sakke: you're doing well!
sakke: i understood everything isn't that what counts?
halee: really?  i thought "suomi" was the country and "suomea" was the language?
halee: no?
sakke: no
sakke: suomi is the language as well
sakke: "minä opiskelen suomea" so the "suomi" just changes a bit because it becomes the object of the sentence or something
halee: ahhhh.
sakke: it's the same like "minä katson televisiota" even though the word is televisio
halee: gotcha.
halee: i mean, "minä ymmärrä"
sakke: you forgot the "n" at the end of "ymmärrä" :)
halee: N!

So in conclusion, I tried to say three of the super easiest sentences in Finnish history (noted in bold), and I didn't get one single one correct!  Will this ever click?  Brain...come on!  I need you!