Thanks Woodymon, I did a lot more reading about templates to figure it out last night. Turns out that wasn't the problem and I figured it out. I replied to my initial post right away noting that I got it working (couldn't figure out how to edit my original post, i'll get to that one later).

However I'm running into a new problem and I'm wondering if it's a limitation of this add on, gc, or a combination. I searched and it looks like at least one other person is having a similar issue? It's about shipping, basically:

i'm testing this out in the sandbox, i setup table rates for different zones. usa shipping works great, however when i try to choose any other country in the dropdown box, it comes up with a message highlighted in yellow that says i don't ship to that country?

i did add all the countries in the shipping module in zen cart. i don't see where to specify valid countries with google checkout settings. where am i suppose to configure this or what step am i missing? thx.