I've seen the Eagle 2 ARF fly and it was a good trainer. The kit would probably be better than the ARF. I built my first kit with not much more experience than you have, and it is getting close to 150 flights on it.

While believing in building over buying ARFs, I would make an exception for someone's first trainer as they take a lot of abuse and punishment. However, if you want to build it you can always beef it up so that it will last. Any ARF trainer needs that anyway. Through misfortune I had to buy an ARF trainer for my first plane instead of a kit. It needed a new fuselage bottom to reinforce the flimsy gear, firewall reinforcement, and it wasn't even fuel proofed in the engine area. That and a few more things have kept it in flying condition even though it has a lot of patches all over.