Breakdown of Mis padres están sorprendidos porque llevo una semana sin olvidar mi horario y sin llegar tarde a clase.
Questions & Answers about Mis padres están sorprendidos porque llevo una semana sin olvidar mi horario y sin llegar tarde a clase.
In this sentence, están sorprendidos uses estar + past participle to describe a temporary emotional state:
- estar sorprendido = to be surprised (to feel surprised right now)
- It works like an adjective: Mis padres están cansados / contentos / sorprendidos.
Son sorprendidos would usually be understood as a passive construction meaning “they are caught” or “they are being surprised (by someone/something)”, which is not what you want here.
So:
- Mis padres están sorprendidos = My parents are (feel) surprised.
- Not son sorprendidos, which would sound wrong or change the meaning.
Sorprendidos agrees in gender and number with mis padres:
- padres = plural, and grammatically masculine (it’s either two men or a mixed-gender pair).
- So the adjective/participle must be masculine plural: sorprendidos.
Other possibilities:
- Mis padres están sorprendidos. (father + mother / two fathers)
- Mis madres están sorprendidas. (two mothers → feminine plural)
- Mi padre está sorprendido. (one father → masculine singular)
- Mi madre está sorprendida. (one mother → feminine singular)
Spanish adjectives and past participles used as adjectives must match the noun they refer to.
Literally, llevo una semana is “I carry one week”, but idiomatically it means:
- llevar + time expression + gerund/structure ≈ “to have been doing something for (time)”.
Common patterns:
- Llevo una semana estudiando. = I’ve been studying for a week.
- Llevamos dos años viviendo aquí. = We’ve been living here for two years.
In this sentence it’s:
- Llevo una semana sin olvidar mi horario y sin llegar tarde a clase.
- Roughly: “I’ve gone a week without forgetting my timetable and without being late to class.”
Spanish often prefers llevar + time for ongoing situations instead of he estado….
He estado una semana sin olvidar mi horario is possible, but llevar is more natural and common here.
Llevar + time expression is already a special construction that itself expresses duration up to the present. It doesn’t combine well with the Spanish present perfect here.
- Llevo una semana sin olvidar… = I have gone / I’ve spent a week without forgetting…
- It is understood as a present-perfect-like meaning already, so the simple present of llevar is the standard form.
He llevado una semana sin olvidar… sounds odd because llevar there would just mean “to carry”, and the idiomatic “duration” meaning is lost or feels forced.
So the normal way is:
- Llevo una semana sin…
- Llevas dos meses trabajando…
- Llevan años viviendo…
Spanish uses sin + infinitive when the subject of the main verb and the action after sin is the same:
- Subject: yo (implied in llevo)
- Actions: olvidar mi horario, llegar tarde a clase
- So: llevo una semana sin olvidar… = “I’ve gone a week without forgetting…”
Rule of thumb:
- Same subject → sin + infinitive
- Voy a casa sin cenar. (I go home without eating dinner.)
- Different subject → sin que + subjunctive
- Se fue sin que yo lo viera. (He left without me seeing him.)
You could say sin que yo olvide mi horario, but it would be very formal/unnatural here._native speakers naturally choose sin olvidar mi horario with the infinitive.
Spanish has two main ways to say “to forget”:
olvidar algo (direct object)
- Olvido mi horario. = I forget my timetable.
- Used in your sentence: sin olvidar mi horario.
olvidarse de algo (pronominal + de)
- Me olvido de mi horario. = I forget about my timetable.
- With sin: sin olvidarme de mi horario.
Both are grammatically correct, but:
- Olvidar algo is more neutral and a bit simpler.
- Olvidarse de algo is very common in speech but adds the reflexive pronoun and de.
In your example, sin olvidar mi horario is shorter, cleaner, and completely natural. That’s why it’s preferred here.
In Spain, horario commonly means:
- timetable / schedule (especially for school, work, buses, etc.)
So mi horario in this context is understood as “my class timetable / my schedule (for school)”.
You could say:
- mi horario de clase = my class timetable.
- mi horario escolar = my school timetable.
All of these are understandable. The original mi horario is simply shorter and natural because the school context is already clear from clase later in the sentence.
Here, a clase means “to class” in the sense of “to lessons / to school”.
- a = to/towards (direction).
- clase without article = “class” as an activity/institution, not a specific individual class.
Compare:
- Llego tarde a clase. = I arrive late to class (in general).
- Llego tarde a la clase de matemáticas. = I arrive late to the maths class (a specific class/session).
- Estoy en clase. = I am in class (I am sitting in a lesson right now).
So:
- llegar tarde a clase → standard way to say “to be late to class” in general.
- Adding la would sound like you are talking about a particular lesson: a la clase de….
In Spanish, being late is expressed with llegar tarde, not with ser:
- llegar tarde = to arrive late, to be late (for something)
- Siempre llego tarde al trabajo. = I’m always late for work.
- No quiero llegar tarde a clase.
Ser tarde exists, but it means “it is late” (time of day), not “I am late to something”:
- Es tarde. = It’s late (in the day).
- Ya es muy tarde para salir. = It’s already very late to go out.
So “be late for class” is always llegar tarde a clase in Spanish.
Both versions are possible:
With sin repeated (as in your sentence):
- …sin olvidar mi horario y sin llegar tarde a clase.
- This sounds clear, balanced, and slightly more emphatic: two separate “without” actions.
With sin only once:
- Most natural is to use ni instead of the second y:
- …sin olvidar mi horario ni llegar tarde a clase.
- Using y without repeating sin is less common here:
- …sin olvidar mi horario y llegar tarde a clase.
This can be understood, but it’s a bit less neat because it might momentarily sound like “without forgetting my timetable and (yes) arriving late”.
- …sin olvidar mi horario y llegar tarde a clase.
- Most natural is to use ni instead of the second y:
So the original:
- sin olvidar … y sin llegar …
is very clear and stylistically good Spanish.
Yes. A very common alternative in Spanish is hace + time + que + negative:
- Hace una semana que no olvido mi horario ni llego tarde a clase.
This means essentially the same:
- Llevo una semana sin olvidar…
- Hace una semana que no olvido…
Both express “It’s been a week now that I haven’t forgotten my timetable or been late to class.”
The llevar + tiempo + sin + infinitivo structure is slightly more colloquial and compact; hace… que… is equally correct and very frequent.
In Spanish, you usually do not put a comma before porque when you are giving a normal, direct reason:
- Mis padres están sorprendidos porque llevo una semana…
- Estoy cansado porque he dormido poco.
You normally add a comma only when the porque-clause is clearly explanatory or afterthought-like, especially in writing:
- No fue a clase, porque estaba enfermo.
(more like: “He didn’t go to class, you see, because he was ill.”)
In your sentence, the cause is tightly connected to the main statement, so the standard punctuation is no comma:
- Mis padres están sorprendidos porque… ✅