What they are telling you to do is grab the status bar and drag it down. If you touch that little line at the top that shows things like your volume, your cell signal, battery level, etc and hold it the grey bar with the lines on it pops up - you said you have seen that. Well, when that happens simply drag your finger down to the bottom of the screen and you will pull the window open.
Here is a quick video I made demonstrating how to do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElZUDR57joU