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I suppose the first question I have to ask is have you ever run with the bulls? I'm sure I speak for all our blog followers when I say we want to hear about the famous running of bulls. Do you think it's incredibly exciting, something just daft tourists do or something that's cruel to animals? What's your take on this slice of Spanish life?

I've never done anything as dangerous as bull running. I've never done anything scary really - not a parachute jump, fire walking or anything like it.
What a wimp, I know!

One more thing I'd like to ask is - what do you do? You said that you're a 'sysadmin' but that's not a word I know. Is that perhaps a specialised job title? Something to do with computers clearly but what, exactly? Please tell us a bit more about your job when you've got time.

Turning now to some of the language aspects of your blog, I thought we'd look at some verb patterns. There's no real rule to follow. I'm afraid it's just a case of noticing them when you see or hear them, and then trying to memorise the patterns.

Verb patterns
1. After verbs like love, hate and like, we use either to + base verb or verb+ing. For example:

I love reading.
I like to walk on beaches at sunset.
She hates to see children smoking.

2. We use to after marry, listen and invite. For example:

She got married to him last summer.
Have you listened to that new CD yet?
They invited me to their house next weekend.

3. We can use about after read, talk, know and have a discussion. For example:

We read about it in the paper this morning.
They talked about their plans last night.
What do you know about computers?
They had a discussion about the situation.

Now for your first task. Have a look at these sentences from your posting and see if you can correct the prepositions. One sentence has two mistakes.

1. I got married almost 3 years ago with Mayte.
2. I have plenty of ideas with different topics to speak this month.
3. I like feel good.
4. We like travel a lot
5. We love spend our time with our doggy.

The past simple and present perfect
Now, let's have a look at the past simple and contrast it with the present perfect.

We use the past simple for things (actions or states of being) that are completed or finished in the past. For example:

Callum wrote a staff blog yesterday.
I lived in Glasgow when I was young.
She went to Edinburgh university.

One of the ways we use the present prefect is to connect something that started in the past and is still going on now. And we make the present perfect with has or have + the past particle (or the third form of the verb) - written, walked, seen - or with has or have + been + verb+ing. For example:

I've lived in London for almost ten years.
Callum has been working in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Learning English since 1998.
We've been looking forward to summer for ages now.

Your homework challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to look at these five sentences from your blog. They are all in the past simple or present perfect tense. Some of them are correct, some of them aren't. If they are correct, you don't have to do anything. If they're wrong, you have to re-write them correctly.

1. I have been working for five years in the University of Navarra.
2. I got married almost 3 years ago
3. I am working as a security guy in a Spanish start-up for almost three years.
4. We knew each other when we were 17 years old.
5. New York possibly was the city we have enjoyed.

That's all for now. Looking forward to your next posting,

Nuala

Vocabulary
mutt - (informal) dog (often used to talk about a dog whose parents are of different breeds)
incredibly - very
daft - (informal) stupid, not clever
cruel - not kind
take on - opinion or interpretation of,
slice of - part of
parachute jump - jumping out of an aircraft with a parachute (a large piece of special cloth which is attached to someone so that they can fall slowly and safely to the ground)
scary - frightening
a wimp - (informal) a person who's not very brave
a case of - a situation or example of
contrast - looking at the differences between two things