static array of nsstrings

I'm new to objective C and iPhone development.  I'm attempting to modify some project template code.  There is a simple table view which overloads cellForRowAtIndexPath, which simply sets a UITableViewCell (dequeued)'s .text field (code snippet shown below in code window).

Here are some questions:

1.  Consider

      cell.text = @"Cherry Pie";

      I understand that @"Cherry Pie" is a language extension that maps to NSString.
      What happens exactly?  I'm assuming a constructor is passed a normal const char *.
      Is this correct?  How is the memory associated with the NSString recovered in this
      case?  Is there refcounting?  Or does cell.text get things freed (i.e. some framework
      convention for dealing with memory)?  It looks like magic, please demystify it.

2.  I wanted to play around with this and create a "statically initialized array of NSStrings".
     This would correspond in C to the following:

      static const char* g_array [] = { "hello", "world" };

      And then to iterate over these values in the body of the function below, using
      "indexPath.row % sz" as the array index.  I want to do something like:

       static NSString* g_array [] = { @"hello", @"world" }

       But this didn't seem to work.  How do I make this work?  Also, is there some
       iPhone/Obj-C idiom for a static array of statically initialized NSStrings?  That is,
       please show me the equivalent iPhone/Obj-C idiom for the C idiom:
       
       static const char* g_array = { "hello", "world" };

       If "pure static" isn't the way to go, fine, just show me "the way people do it"
       (e.g. a dynamic, initialize once, routine, etc.)

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// Sample code I am modifying.
 
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
	UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:@"recipeCell"];
	if(nil == cell) {
		cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero reuseIdentifier:@"recipeCell"] autorelease];
	}
	if(indexPath.row == 0) {
		cell.text = @"Cherry Pie";
	} else if(indexPath.row == 1) {
		cell.text = @"Cake";
 
// snip...