First let me congratulate you on making an incredibly smart decision. Corel stinks, and thats the bottom line.
Where do I start...
Corel (before buying most of its competition) was originally based in Canada where the copywright laws are well, looser. For years corel has been decompiling Adobe's code and reverse-engineering their own software. It wouldnt be so bad except that they only take bits and pieces of code which leaves Corel with half an implamentation. The code it not clean, the code is not postscript and the results are not acceptable. How can an app you've used for years be so bad you ask? Keep using illustrator and youll find out. They're not 'foutain fills' they're gradients now.
As far as help in AI, my best advise is if you can avoid it, dont go back to Corel for those things you 'know you can do'. I gaurantee AI has a better way. Hit F1 from within AI and youll get a really nice browser driven manual. Illustrators logic is indeed different from Corels... and thank god for that. AI uses logic that is condusive to the existing printing industry as well as the digital one we know today which Adobe and their postscript technology is responsible for.
Oh, and you always have me.