cabe, your early college experience sounds alot like mine.

you just have to keep hounding those administrative dickweeds until they get all of that paperwork done correctly. how large is your university? i know that at mine for example, which has so many bureaucratic divisions, it's really hard for anyone to get all their shit straight, especially aid and money...

and yeah, the TA/prof with the difficult accent: welcome to college dude. i've had to change sections to get a TA I can understand...