RE: flying With the wind..
It will help with windy landings to learn how to do higher speed touch and go's. Sometimes when you get caught out in some bad wind you may need 1/2 throttle to keep the plane moving forward. In that scenario, you can never do a traditional stalling landing unless you want to have the plane moving backwards when it touches down. Having the skills to touch the wheels to the ground when you are well above flying speed will save your plane on those days when hard winds just show up out of nowhere.
My worst wind story was a takeoff in maybe 3 mph wind out of the north, then about 4 minutes later I had very gusty 15 mph wind out of the south. I had noticed the dark clouds in the distance and misjudge how fast the storm was coming in. It was the first time I had landed when standing at the wrong end of the runway, but luckily I was flying my Kaos which just does what you tell it to no matter what.