Butifarra y'all

So the soccer season came to a close last Wednesday for the winter and my team, the girls team and the officers of the club (president, treasurer, etc) all came for a winter cook out. The main attraction is the BUTIFARRA (pronounced booty far ra...roll that tongue) and it is a long and tasty sausage. Nothing is special about this sausage to describe to you other than every one here in Catalonia, outside of the vegetarians, seems to go ape shit over it. Funny, I thought the event was called butifarra as everyone asked me if I was coming to the butifarrada. I thought it was a night club or something. I said yes and rushed home to ask Carme what the hell had I gotten myself into. The boys on the team seem to buzz with giddiness at the upcoming event. Jesus even made sure to ask me several times if i were going to be there. Partly to make sure I understood what he said in Spanish and partly because he probably could not sleep the night before over his uncontainable excitement.

Now part of my fear in these events is conversation. There were many people and out of 40 or so, only 2 spoke English. I am still not fluent enough to talk about random subjects. Sure I can talk about where I am from, how old I am and I can even say "my socks are wet from the flood that is encompassing our fair city" But random conversation is a bit more intimidating. Ok granted I will be with my soccer team and I have learned a lot of words in the way of soccer. Like I can say "run faster" or "pass the ball"...you know soccer terms. But still I am lacking. My trouble is not speaking as much as it is hearing. My oral comprehension is severly lacking as the language is likened to a rapid fire machine gun. I am not sure if I discussed this before but in the Spanish language, unlike in English, when you read a word, it sounds like it looks. there are no rules or special things to remember. An "a" always sound like an "a". There are no long vowels or words you just remember like "might". So when the language is spoken, it´s easy to read, write and pronounce but when hearing it, the words just run together. For example the word for slow or slowly is "despacio (day spa see oh or day spa thee oh )" but the word for office is "despacho (day spa cho)". These words sound similiar to me and I get stumped in why someone is running an office.

So I show up. And one of the officers, a big burly man whose name I can´t remember tells me he has my membership card for the club. you see despite being a coach, in order to pay Alex´s soccer fees at a cheaper price, I was givine a member´s fee. Carme was handling the finances and never paid my 80€ fee. So later in the dinner, he brought the card to me and put it up for me to see. He rattle on and I instinctively reached for it. He did not let it go. then when he would not let go and I was lost in his words ("you lost me at hola") I pulled a little tighter. His response: Tranquilo. he said it not just once but 3 times.

Now you can imagine what it might mean seeing as it resembles the word tranquil. It is used often here in common language and loosely means that every thing is ok, it´s cool, blah blah. But the way people say it and body language seems to mean to me ¨calm down". Now in English, if someone is waving a gun or ranting and raving like a lunatic, we would say calm down, right? Needless to say this dude is not on my sopping list for Christmas.