[GRASSLIST:8593] newbie question region

[Travis Kirstine GIS Tech]

Hi all I'm very new to GRASS and just trying to figure a few things out, I
have some experiance with GIS and have done a few of the online tutorials
using Spearfish.  I would like to now try to use some of my own datasets
(mostly in ESRI shpfiles or GTiffs)but am having trouble setting up my
environment (Database location mapset g.region etc..) I've tried setting up
a empty database and using import GDAL some of my DEM GTiffs but am unable
to set the region (I tried the raster extents as north south east west
limits).  Basically I'm looking for advice on how to set up a empty database
and then on how to import data into it.
Travis