Actually, I had a villager find a drink while wandering with her baby, which brought her up to adept doctor knowledge. Not total mastery, but a good start!

I have not actually played VV1. I just discovered this game with the release of VV2, and I love it so far... I can tell you though, that yes, you do pretty well start off with the basics. The story premise is that two villagers from VV1 fall through a... something, I forget, and discover a portion of the island with all confused children looking for food.

You start off the game with I think, 7 or 8 villagers of varying ages, a few of which are of young adult age.

As far as running both at the same time, I can't see any problem with that! Again, I haven't played VV1, but they are two totally seperate programs, so I don't see why not?