Problems with hotmail, no contacts

When I was told live.com was going away and was being updated to Microsoft outlook, it happened.  The new format had all my contacts and flagged messages.  Today (3/19/2013) when I went to my email, I was told to create a new account with hot mail.  I did so, including new sign in name and password.  Then a message appeared to update to outlook.  I clicked on it and was told no update was available.  My new hotmail account does not have my contacts.  I clicked on the "import contacts" prompt, it said to go to my old account, create a new folder, add my contacts to it, then import.  My question is, how do I go to my old account?  Is is live.com or outook and how do I get to it?   I have been working on this for 3 hours now and no result.  This is very frustrating.  I have contacts outside the US and no way to contact them without email.  I don't have them written down because all the info was in "contacts"  Tell me what to do.  PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE!!!