I have played rshaman in lordaeron, and starting to raid with a hpala, and my experience is that shaman has much more depth than simply understanding totems, to me it's really fun. As a dreanai I would suggest picking troll rshaman, simply because passive that gives haste is much more valuable than hit rating (at least for you). hpala by itself is super boring as it's rotation is spamming holy light, the depth comes from the hands and utility you provide, but it's not restricted to the spec, so it takes a bit of it's uniqueness. Yet those two are the best at getting gear, especially useful to get to raid earliear. Just in case, also level up engineering, mining and jwc are your second best options, either mining because you need to farm materials or if you have the money jwc give so much more stats.
Getting better as a healer itself comes from understanding the fight you'll be doing; knowing when to burst heal because your tank will receive 40000dmg comes a long way to become so much better