A week in Salvador gives Marina plenty to tell — and telling a story in Portuguese means choosing, verb by verb, between three ways of looking at the past.

	Forms	What it does	Example
Perfeito	cheguei, comprou, fomos	a finished event — it happened, full stop	Chegamos na segunda-feira. — We arrived on Monday.
Imperfeito	estava, era, tinha, ia	the scene: weather, descriptions, feelings — and habits	Estava muito calor. — It was very hot.
Estava + -ndo	estava nadando	an action in progress, often cut short by a perfeito	Eu estava nadando quando começou a chover. — I was swimming when it started to rain.

A quick test: if the sentence answers and then what happened?, use the perfeito. If it answers what was it like? or what used to happen?, use the imperfeito: Todo dia a gente ia à praia. — Every day we'd go to the beach.