it sounds like you know what to do?

Just not how to do it. Gonna look through the links posted in here though.

merge the 2 photos in photoshop
delete the under/over exposed areas leaving the correctly exposed areas.

Scott went into much more detail but it's pretty simple.

WHITE BALANCE
*Camera profile
Exposure
Curves
*Recovery
**Fill light
*Black Point
**Vibrance

That's almost all I ever do, usually in that order. Starred things I do about half the time. Fill light I do much less, and usually never put the slider past 15 or so. Don't overdo fill light, it's hideous. I sometimes touch vibrance.

White balance is in caps because color is third in my mind behind content and light.

Sure, I occasionally use other things depending on the subject but that's it.

That's just bad light. You're not going to make pretty photos out of bad light. You can merge, blah blah blah in Photoshop but it's never going to beat a shot taken when the light is properly balanced (right amount of setting/rising sun vs. street lights).
For a while I thought the same type of thing, but you just really need to shoot in good light. That's the biggest part of photography.

You should get a book that schools teach from. You will get a book full of everything there is to do, along with a bunch of cd's. That way you can read through, do the hands on exercises, and compare your final project to the real final project.