Your medio ambiente is your environment. This refers to your cultural, social or natural environment.

We had a pipe break in the street in front of our house recently. While trying to figure out who to call  we found the phrase fuga de agua. Literally it means a flight of water but is used to refer to water escaping accidently.

No deje piedras sobre el pavimento is a sign we see frequently while traveling through Mexico. It means, do not leave stones on the pavement.
It’s an interesting and necessary sign that stems from people placing stones on the road behind their car to warn others they are stopped or broken down. The problem arises when […]

In its most benign form bien means good. ¿Como está? (How are you?) Bien. (Good, fine.)
Bien can also mean muy. Those shoes are bien feo (very ugly).
Make it plural, bienes, and you have goods, material possessions.

Aguafiestas is from the two words, agua and fiestas. Agua being water and fiestas parties, a wet party. But more properly it is a slang term for a wet blanket, a kill joy, a party pooper, or someone who takes all the fun out.

Demás is usually seen in the phrase lo demás or los demás which means the others or the rest.
It is however also used as por demás to mean something useless.
And also as por lo demás meaning otherwise.

The verb gustar is most commonly associated with the word like. It would be used in most places that we use the word like in English. However, it is not a grammatical equivalent, which is why English speakers have such a hard time knowing how to use gustar. But if you think of gustar as […]

At church the other day, I noticed that a couple of the verses we read started with the phrase por tanto. I couldn’t reason out the meaning to myself. I knew that tanto was much or a lot and the verses just did not make sense with this meaning.
One of the verses was:
Por tanto, id, […]

Anyone who has learned some Spanish knows that gato is cat. But did you know it has other meanings?
One of the strangest is that a car jack is called a gato. On certain types of jacks they look similar to a cat when arching its back. This action pushes the car up. That is the […]

The words say “it appears to you” but when asked as a question, it means “do you like it?” I think it could be translated, “how does it appear to you?” It seems to always be used when asking someone if they like what they see.
When we were house hunting for some friends I first […]