I'm level 3. I must be doing something wrong though. I walked around for an hour and a half and visited about 10 poke-stops in my local area and only ran into one pokemon. A Cubone. Am I doing something wrong? Seems like a lot of time and walking to only run into one pokemon.

Busier areas (like down town in larger cities with all the clumped up pokestops) are a big place to get good pokemon. Especially if lures are put down to attract them.
Also, totally not advocating driving while playing, but I leave my phone attached to my holder with it on, much like I would gps and see what pops up in the area. If something good I want shows up, I will pull over and track it from there.
Another semi decent way to level is using those lucky eggs.

What about actually running into pokemon? Am I supposed to do something specific to get them to pop on screen? I got excited a couple of times when my phone vibrated, but they were just email notifications.

Nope. They're meant to just be random spawns on your gps map. I know some areas are a bit deader than others like rural areas tend to have very little pokemon. But if you're in a suburban area/city area etc, pokemon should be plenty.

I live in a pretty populated area. Wouldn't call it rural at all. I kept seeing like ruffles of grass on the screen, and like white ripples, but nothing would happen when I walked over to them.

That is weird. Try going to a place with a bunch of historical things or churches. Those seem pretty popular land marks where pokestops are located.

Kk. I'll try that. There are plenty of pokestops in my area. I just wasn't running into any pokemon.

Pokemon spawning apparently goes by how much phone usage is in the area.

For example train station, bus stations, shopping centres etc would in theory spawn more Pokemon.

So I've read anyway.

Interesting

Woo, team Valor! :P

I'm only level 8 though, damn rural areas :(

Yeah rural areas kinda get jipped pretty hard which I find really sucky :/

Doesn't help my phone's old as well, when it's not crashing on trying to load the game it's going from (it saying it's) 100% full battery to flat in 10 minutes lol :P

The battery part is just uhg :/ as far as crashes go, that seems to be a complaint across the board. I get a ton of freezes on my android and roomie gets crashes on her iphone. Both phones maybe a year old.

Yeah, having to have gps + the game running is major power hog, tempted to get one of those portable battery packs, might make my phone last at least a normal amount of time.

Thought the crashes where due to to my phone being old and crappy (5 years old now lol); had to load a custom rom just to download and play it.

Mmnf. Valor...why is everyone I know Valor? I went Instinct, and the fact that I had a Pikachu, but now have a Raichu which was my starter.

Not sure why Valor is popular lol. I went cause of fire/strength traits lol

Yay team Valor! Love the way the badge looks, such a neat idea!

Team Valor! I'm level 20 xD

Awesome. :D

Team valor. Lvl 15 here

Team Valor: Lvl 13!