French language Q&A Forum

I have not seen this one addressed elsewhere, so I will post it and see if there is any advice. In all the exercises so far, "près de" is used. I am in Quebec and have been using "proche de", which seems to be commonly used.

So - the question: is there some subtle differences in the use of "près" or "proche" which I should learn?

Nous avons été très surpris en apprenant la nouvelle.

We were really surprised when we heard the news.

I would have used nous étions instead of nous avons été. Is that not correct?

In English nous avons été très surpris translates to - We have been very surprised which implies the surprise happened and is still ongoing or at least has a prolonged duration, whereas nous étions translates to - We were, which implies it happened but is no longer ongoing. The latter seems to be the correct answer to this question especially since being surprised is usually a point in time thing.

I thought "plus jamais" et "jamais plus" were both acceptable.