Also, if I shouldn't use "Pero" for 'however' as well as for 'but,' I'd appreciate help on that, too.
I have acquired a short-distance pen-pal, and I find that in writing to her, I want a lot of both of those to make my train of thought connect up.
Can I use 'entonces' like that? I'm sure it varies and is complicated.
I'm not so much looking for a Single Right Answer (because I *have* been paying attention enough to grasp that I can't have one, even if I want it) so much a sense of what the most common responses are.
My new friend is from Colombia, and most of the Spanish I've studied has been Mexican, so probably either of those two would be my top choice, but really anything will be interesting (as long as you tell me which dialect it's coming from).
Thanks.
(Anecdote for your amusement: in correcting my first letter to her, she wrote, "En ingles antes de la “y” se pone una coma, en español usualmente no se utiliza." Which meant that I got to try to explain the hotly debated "Oxford/Harvard comma" in Spanish which, as you will no doubt recall, I don't actually know very well. My response included timeless sentences like, "muchos creen que es muy educada, mientras otros creen que es estupida.")
(Right. Back to the point. "And so..." ?)