All the explanations are very good. Try to think like "used to..." and you'll have that past tense. The hard think will be to conjugate the verbs. I'll give you some examples: Yo era ... I used to be. Yo fui ... I was Yo estaba ... I used to be (stay). Yo estuve ... I was (stayed). Stay, actually, is "quedarse". Yo comía ... I used to eat. Yo comí ... I ate This is hard: Yo cabía ... I used to fit (like inside a car or a certain space). Yo cupe ... I fitted One thing, though: I used to walk, for example, has an exact translation in Spanish: Yo solía caminar. I used to.... = Yo solía.... I'm used to....= Yo suelo... (By the way, suelo means "soil" as well, but that doesn't matter; just a curiosity) I didn't mean to confuse you, just to enrich your Spanish language experience.

Many of the languages that evolved from Latin (Italian, Portuguese, French, and Spanish) share two past tense forms whereas English only has one. Same problem with ser and estar (two verbs in Spanish, only one in English -- to be). In Fabi's examples, you can see that she didn't add a time reference in her second sentence. You cannot say "yo iba a tu casa ayer, el año pasado, en 2010" (specific point in time). However, you can say "yo iba a tu casa cada año, cuando era joven, durante el verano" (any clause not referring to one specific point in time). That being said, you are right in commenting that both "fue" and "iba" mean "went", but try and think of "iba" as "(I) used to go". That should help make the difference between the two Spanish verb forms. HTH

yo fui a tu casa ayer, is a specific time and is a unique action yo iba a tu casa, many times in the past, is more descriptive, so in English is the same, i think only chanche the context. ;) i hope help you

Yo fui a la escuela-I went to the shcool (In this case -fui-means that you went to that place maybe once, maybe twice, or maybe constantly but what matters is that you went there at least once) Yo iba a la escuela en las mañanas-I went to shcool every morning (Iba means that you constantly went to the shcool). If you say-Yo fui a la escuela en las mañanas- It does not make sense. It is very subtle but in spanish iba means the action of going to the place from the start to the end. And fui means that you were in that place.

Thank you for the explanation.