Most of the notes are on Notepad or Word.
You should be good to go, then. A good free Notepad replacement on the Mac is TextWrangler.
If your Office needs are reasonably basic (no fancy VBA-based Excel applications
, for instance), you should look at OpenOffice and LibreOffice. LibreOffice is a recent fork of OpenOffice (see the Wikipedia). A group of OpenOffice developers decided they didn't like the direction Oracle was taking with the assets it had acquired in its acquisition of Sun. OpenOffice / LibreOffice document files are interchangeable with Microsoft Office (as long as you avoid certain advanced features, such as macros).
Another Mac pointer: I rarely use the Dock. I keep it hidden below the bottom of the laptop monitor, configured to appear only if I move the mouse there. I might check it once in a while to access the wastebasket or check status.
To launch apps, I use Spotlight. I type Cmd-Spacebar. The Spotlight textbox appears in the upper right. Then I type a few characters of the app's name (e.g., F-i-r or C-h-r), whereupon Spotlight instantly locates the app (Firefox or Google Chrome in this example). Then I hit Enter, and the app launches. Spotlight learns what you tend to look for and prioritizes what you are likely to choose when there are multiple matches. I find using it much easier than managing the Dock or rummaging through the Applications folder.
Another handy use of Spotlight is difficult words. Cmd-Spacebar and type an obscure word. Spotlight will pop a Definition link to the top. Hit return, and the Mac Dictionary opens to the definition.