Pontiac Repair: Car-Illiterate College Girl, In-turned wheels, wheel drive vehicles, poor college kid

Question
I have a 1992 Pontiac Grand Am Sedan with a V-6.  It has approximately 193000 miles on it.  I just had my brakes checked.  They told me that the front brakes were 40% in tact and they replaced the rear brakes.  Today while drive to school, I stopped at a stop sign, then went to make a left turn when I hear a loud slam or pop or whatever.  I assumed from the noise that a tire had burst because I had no reason to assume otherwise.  However, I got out of the car to see which tire popped, neither seemed to be flat!  I then noticed that the driver's side front wheel was turned right while the passenger side front wheel was turned left.  I assumed that the axle had broken.  I was pretty embarrassed because this all happened right in front of a bus stop of a bunch of high school kids, and another person from my neighborhood was coming up the street behind me.  The boys from the bus stop and the guy behind me helped to push the car to the side of the road where it could be legally parked.  One of them mentioned that it was probably the U-joint that was broken.  I searched on the internet to see about U-joints, but from what I can tell, that model is a front wheel drive (though I don't know for sure...I am only guessing based on info from MSN.com) and many of the websites I visited kind of made the comment that front-wheel drive vehicles don't have u-joints, they have cv-joints instead.  Also, when I tried to see how much the parts might be...no u-joints were availible to research for that make and model.  However, I couldn't find any prices for cv joints either though the parts were listed.  I don't know...could you possibly take an educated guess as to what is wrong and and how much it might cost?  Thanks...I would really appreciate it...especially since I am soo much the poor college kid...and I think I just got ripped off when I had my brakes done.  I can't go through that again!

Answer
The first thing I can tell you that isn't causing your problem Rose is that this isn't an axle problem. If both tires are facing the nose then you either have a broken ball joint or tie rod end, and considering you were able to push it I would be much more inclined to believe tie rod end. Depending on which end, inner or outer, broke will make a big difference on how much this will cost with inner being the more expensive end. The other part that may be bad (hopefully not) is the power steering rack. This would be an extremely expensive job that a shop would have to do. Pricewise an outer tie rod should be @ $80-100 plus an alignment, inner @ $175-200 plus alignment and the rack @ $500-600 plus alignment. Best bet is if you have a friend that is good with cars they can look by the back side of the tires up high in the wheelwell to see which tie rod broke or have it towed to a reputable shop to be inspected. Regardless of what broke it will have to be replaced before you can drive it and deffinately get an alignment done with any front end work. Hope this helps you and good luck :)