Before anyone tells me to, I've already tried the search function and I've read plenty of pages on HID's but still am a bit fuzzy on a few things so if you could help me I'd GREATLY appreciate it.

So to start off I'm needing new foglight bulbs and figured while I'm getting some I might as well get HID's for something a little bit brighter. I thought that 5000k or maybe 6000k would be fairly decent, but somebody please tell me if I'm wrong on that.
Here are my questions:
1. What all will I need to hook up and use HID's in my foglights? I've occasionally been running across the word "ballast" in some of the HID threads and I'm wondering what exactly this is and if I will need one......whatever it is.
2. Will I need to somehow upgrade my stock wiring or connectors to use HID's? From what I can tell there are HID's that have a 880 style connector (the same as the junk bulbs I took out) but I'm not sure if I can just plug those directly into the stock connectors and be good to go, or if I will need to do something else first.
3. Should I go with 35W or 55W? From the little bit I understand it's just a difference in brightness, but I really don't know if I'm right on that so if someone could clarify it I'd appreciate it.
4. Should I get glass housings (and if so where can I get them) or should I just go with the original housings that I have and hope they don't melt? I'm hoping that I can avoid melting my original housings because I'm only going with 5000k or 6000k HID's, not some super-bright 100000k or anything.
5. Where would you recommend I buy the bulbs at? I've been looking at DDM Tuning on this page with 880/881/898/899 etc and 5000k selected in the drop down boxes.
6. Anything else I should know? I think with the answers to the above questions I will have everything I need to know, but by all means if I'm forgetting anything please tell me.

Thanks.