I can confirm all of this learning Dvorak. Having seen this with myself and others, it really is like a short version of learning a language and seems to use the same part of my brain. There's that period where you're not good in either layout and you need to get something done like you're saying (but after all the fun initial gains) and that's when most folks quit. If you can push past that week or so, it seems you're good. It's painful though.

And yeah, I can still touch-type in Qwerty too, but it feels like contorting my hands in knots. I can type it in fine, I just never noticed before how crazy you have to move your hands to do it.