Cumpleanos en Espana + Tarta de Zanahoria

I was lucky to have great weather this past Thursday on my Birthday :) Actaully the whole last week was great, and I took advantage of it by laying outside a few times at the park below where I live. Here in Spain, and most of Europe I believe, it is a tradition that when it is your birthday, you have to bring something for the team to eat. Unlike our greedy culture in United States where we just take take take! I wanted to make something somewhat unique for them to eat so I thought Carrot Cake would be a good idea, becuase when I mentioned the idea to them they all thought it would be disgusting. Only my German teammate Clara, and Tina had tried it before. On my birthday Lara and I set out to find all the ingredients I would need, which was a process in itself trying to translate the things I needed. The funniest part was trying to find Baking Soda. Lara google translated it on her phone, and it said "bicarbonato de sodio." We asked the worker from the supermarket and she took us to where it was, sure enough it was there, and I was so excited they had it and threw it in the cart. Then, Lara picked it up and started reading it, at which point we realized that it was for cleaning dishes or getting rid of bad odors!!! Hahaha, I swear I wasn´t trying to kill them! I ended up googling later where I could find it, and I ended up having to buy the edible version in a Pharmacy! I also couldn´t find confectioners sugar in a big quantity the first day. It was about 6 dollars for a tiny little jar! I had to go to another store in which I found a big carton. While shopping, I also realized there are no Bagels in Spain! Anyways after about three supermarkets and a pharmacy I was able to get all of the ingredients. Lara thought it was impossible that with the stuff I bought, it would turn out looking like the pictures I had showed her. That debate ended in her You Tubing a video of some southern lady making a Carrot Cake! Ha! After translating all the mesaurments from cups to grams or mL, I was able to bake the cake! The back edge got burnt a little bit, but other than that it turned out pretty good! The Cream Cheese frosting was especially yummy. My team said that they liked it, hopefully they weren´t just being nice :) I had kids practice on my birthday as well, and I wasn´t going to tell them it was my Birthday, but somehow one of them found out. They ended up tugging on my earlobe 22 times....Friday night after our practice we went to see the men´s team play, who have now clenched a playoff spot! We won last night by about 20. We will play in Salmanca next weekend (Our longest road trip), and then 2 more games after that and our regular season is over! My doctor´s appointment got moved up to this coming Thursday, so hopefully I will be cleared to run! I don´t have too many good pictures, but here are a couple that Lara had taken with her phone. One of me baking the cake in her house, and the other of me sitting out side during lunch trying to find some word in my dictionary. I try to carry it with me at all times becuase there are always vocab words that one of us don´t know in the other language!