uhm, hi there :3
from readin your story, I can tell that i was in a completely same situation! in mah country, where i originally came from, there's no such thing as "Hub" or other channels that translate My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, so i didn't know about it until, I think, September. then I saw, on Deviantart, loads of pictures with ponies from MLP and I was wonderin, since I knew what's original old MLP was, how ppl can watch show for a little girls? so, I asked one person i know, who watched and watch MLP now, what's so good about this show? she said, like, don't know it's just cute.
so first thing that I saw with MLP:FiM was Pinkie's Cupcakes song in Russian [since I'm Russian]. it was a funny dubbed, like, "just for lulz" thingy. and I rly enjoyed the animation. first episode I watch was S2E1, in which I absolutely loved Fluttershy, Pinkie and especially Discord!
soon enough I searched for episodes from season 1 on torrents, downloaded them, and started to watch. and it was amazing! best time of mah life, I think..
so, yah....I had the same opinion and emberassment as you, but then I found out that MLP:FiM is just the BEST.POSSIBLE.THING.
anyways, nice to meet ya, I hope this wall of words didn't scare ya