NEWBIE: Querying custom fields in template only returns empty arrays!

I have added custom date, text and checkbox fields to the event content type and 'm in the early stages of learning how to manipulate these values in the template. I can query the $node object for all the fields in the node and I correctly get back all the intrinsic as well as custom field names. When I query the values, though, all I get are 'Array' types for the custom fields. Looping through these arrays produces no results that are of use to me. Here's an example of the code I embedded in event.tpl.php:

<?php
foreach($node  as $key => $value) {
    print $key.": ".$value."<br />\n";
    if (is_array($value) && (substr($key,0,6) == "field_")) {
        print "array size:".count($value)."<br />\n";
        foreach($value as $arr_key => $arr_val){
            print "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;".$arr_key.": ".$arr_value."<br />\n";    
        }
    }
}
?>

Any help/elucidation or further pointers are greatly appreciated. If this query is incorrectly posted in this forum, kindly let me know where best to have new drupal user queries researched.