Question about explicit template instantiation

[Edward Diener]

I am working my way throught the pdf documentation ( 1.0 ) regarding 
templates in D and in the topic about explicit template instantiation 
and I came across the lines below, which have me stumped:

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A template instantiation can be aliased:
template TFoo(T) { alias T* t; }
alias TFoo!(int) abc;
abc.t x; // declare x to be of type int*
Multiple instantiations of a TemplateDeclaration with the same 
TemplateArgumentList, before
implicit conversions, all will refer to the same instantiation. For example:
template TFoo(T) { T f; }
alias TFoo!(int) a;
alias TFoo!(int) b;
...

a.f = 3;
assert(b.f == 3); // a and b refer to the same instance of TFoo
This is true even if the TemplateInstances are done in different modules.

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My confusion with the above is that an alias, when referring to a type, 
is the equivalent of a C++ typedef AFAICS. So 'a' and 'b' above are 
types ( because the instantiated template is a type ) and then I see the 
'a.f=3' line followed by the 'assert(b.f == 3)' line and I can not 
understand how a type can be used in either expression.

I am also assuming that the line beginning with "Multiple instantiations 
of a..." only mean that the 'a' and 'b' refer to the same type, but 
perhaps I have missed something in this explanation.