Can someone help me with a couple of issues I'm having with assembling my bicycle?

It’s hardly even assembling really; I just have to put in the seat, install the handle bars (the gear and break cables are already installed, including on the handle bars), attach/install the front wheel and then put on the pedals.

So, the seat is in, the handle bars are “provisionally” installed but I know they should probably be lined up with the front fork as close to perfectly as is humanly possible, so …

1st question: Is there some method or technique to ensure that the handle bars are properly aligned other than just eyeballing them? That doesn’t seem very precise plus every time I try it, it seems off one way or the other.*

After the handle bars, I am supposed to install the front wheel so:

2nd question: The instructions tell me that prior to installing the front wheel I need to:

“Squeeze front brakes together, at the same time lift the brake noodle out of the brake noodle housing.”

Yes, you guessed it. What the heck is a brake noodle? What does it look like? How do I identify it? If know what it looks like I can lift it out of it’s housing.

Or we can go the other way. How do I identify the brake noodle housing? Then I can probably assume that whatever it is housing is the brake noodle.