Having trouble getting premiere pro trimmed clips into compositions

Question

I'm working on a TV intro mashup in the style of the tv show happy days with another editor.  I'm a complete noob with after effects.  I've never used it before for anything.  The other editor has created template in after effects of the record player with compositions of the actor intros in the center of the record and sent me the project.  He's created a composition for each character intro and I'm trying to go in and replace the clips he used as place holders with clips i've trimmed in premiere pro.
At first I was successful by dragging and dropping the premiere pro sequence into the after effects project.  Then when I looked at the sequence composition I could see the trimmed clips and could copy paste the clips I wanted into their respective intro compositions.  I noticed the first time I imported the sequence into after effects and made changes to it in premiere pro it updated in real time.  Now all of a sudden any changes I make to the premiere pro sequence no longer update in after effects.  What's weird is they do update to the extend if I watch the sequence play in the after effects viewer I can see the changes but on the timeline where the clips are laid out the changes aren't reflected and it's showing me an earlier version of the sequence.
So my two main questions are
1) how come the time line in after effects is no longer updating the changes I make to the sequence in premiere pro?
2) what is the easiest way to get trimmed premiere pro clips into after effects compositions?

Answer 1

Question 1:
Since you're so new to AE, it's quite possible that any of a number of things happened without you being aware of it. That and you haven't given much information for troubleshooting. I mean, we don't even know the rough versions you're using, much less minor version numbers. (For example, we don't know if you're using CC 2014, much less if you're running the 13.2 update for AE or not.) Here's some info we would need to help: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/961743
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/961743
Question 2:
You can choose File>Import Premiere Pro Project and it'll bring the clips in. It won't update at all, but it will give you the clips you need in a way that's easier to deal with in AE.
Alternatively, you can choose to dynamically link a Premiere Project (which sounds like what you initially did). In most cases, I prefer the first way.
Since you've never used AE before, there are going to be a lot of things that frustrate you if you try to plow ahead without a knowledge of the basics. I strongly recommend going through the resources linked here: Getting started with After Effects Granted, there is an extensive set of resources there, but that's because AE is such a deep and complex program. Without a foundation in the basics, you are going to just keep on being frustrated.