Cuando llegamos a la escuela, buscamos nuestros amigos.

When we arrive at school, we look for our friends.

Breakdown of Cuando llegamos a la escuela, buscamos nuestros amigos.

• el amigo: the friend
• la escuela: the school
• cuando: when
• nosotros: we
• a: to
• ,: comma
• nuestros: our
• buscar: to look for
• llegar: to arrive

Questions & Answers about Cuando llegamos a la escuela, buscamos nuestros amigos.

Why is it a la escuela instead of en la escuela?

In Spanish, a is used to indicate movement or direction towards a place, so a la escuela means "to the school." If you said en la escuela, you would be talking about being already inside the school (i.e., "in the school"). Since the sentence focuses on arriving at the school, a is the correct preposition.

Why do we say llegamos instead of using another tense?

The form llegamos can be both present tense ("we arrive") and past tense ("we arrived") for nosotros in Spanish. In many contexts, it’s the past tense (preterite) referring to a completed action ("When we arrived at the school, we looked for our friends"). The choice between present or past in Spanish often depends on context, adverbs of time, or surrounding clauses.

Why do we write buscamos nuestros amigos without a preposition, unlike in English where we say "look for"?

In Spanish, the verb buscar already carries the meaning of "to look for," so no additional preposition is needed. While in English you have "look for (something)," in Spanish it’s simply buscar (algo). Hence, buscamos translates directly to "we look for" or "we looked for," requiring no extra words.

Should it be buscamos a nuestros amigos instead of buscamos nuestros amigos because they are people?

Yes, many speakers would use the personal a here, saying buscamos a nuestros amigos, because amigos (friends) are people. The personal a is a marker used before a direct object that is a specific person (or people). However, you’ll also see some native speakers omit it in casual conversation. Grammatically, buscamos a nuestros amigos is considered more precise.

Why is it nuestros amigos (masculine plural) and not nuestras amigas or something else?

Spanish possessive adjectives and nouns must agree in gender and number. Here, nuestros amigos means the speaker is referring to a group of male friends or a mixed group. If the group were all female, it would be nuestras amigas. The important point is that nuestros matches the plural, and amigos matches the masculine (or mixed) group.