Syncing addresses

Hi, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what information is stored how between google and my phone, particulalry with respect to my (postal) addresses. I noticed that if I add an address to a contact it shows up fine on my phone, but not in my gmail account (even after waiting several hours and manually syncing the phone). However, if I add an address in my gmail account it shows up in both gmail and my contacts on my phone. Furthermore, when I use google maps on my phone and hit "directions" I can start entering the name of my contact and it will pop up in the list for me to choose if I had entered it via gmail or the phone. But if I instead hit the little bookmark icon next to the box for the address and hit the contacts options, it gives me a list of contacts that have addresses, but only contacts for whom those addresses had been entered on my phone.

I should also note that all my contacts are stored as google contacts and not phone contacts. But it does seem as if addresses are somehow being stored as phone only when I add them via the phone, and that this is somewhat intentional since choosing contacts in google maps lists only those phone-entered contacts. Does anyone understand what's going on here?

-Max