I Bet You Didn't Know This About Me....

I don't know that many people know this about me, but I love auctions. I mean love them. I get so caught up in the excitement, the emotions, and the fun that goes along with them. Chris gets into them, too, so it's something we enjoy doing together. Out here in Bahrain, there aren't many auctions to be had, but today we got to go to one! Woohoo! The D.O.D. (Department of Defense) school had an Asian-themed auction to help raise money for the senior class. They shipped in a ton of items from China and Japan for people to bid on. All of the profit will go towards their graduation ceremony. I guess it's not cheap to rent places in Bahrain, and the seniors apparently think the school is either too small or not cool enough to host a graduation ceremony. So even if the cause wasn't what I'd consider "worthy", it was still fun and a great excuse to BID! :-) :-) :-) And boy did we bid. We came home with way more than we bargained for.

They had the auction split up into two parts: a silent auction and public auction. Everything we ended up bringing home was from the silent auction. We bid on a handful of things in the public auction, but well, that didn't work out as I'll explain soon. It wasn't the best ran auction I've ever been to. Students were the auctioneers and didn't have a clue what they were doing. They were moving way too s l o w and giving people too much time to decide if they wanted to bid more or at all. Unfortunately, there were also some high rollers who weren't letting anyone else in on the fun, even though it was supposed to be a friendly high school fundraiser and not a Christie's auction. It's frustrating that a couple people decided to ruin the fun for everyone else and might even have discouraged people from wanting to come next year. Not me, though. I'm resilient! :-)

I'm pretty sure one guy was a vendor who was planning to resale what he won, and another guy was just an annoying Bahraini who we later found out is part of the royal family. They had these amazing Tiffany-type lamps that I was in love with. The royal family guy bid on almost all of them and wouldn't let anyone else win. He kept his paddle up until the competition gave up. Why did he have to ruin everyone else's fun when he can buy a genuine Tiffany lamp anytime he wants? He's probably just going to put them in some storage bin with every other nonsensical purchase he's ever made. He reminded me of some rich, preppy high schooler who likes to flaunt his wealth to all his classmates through the name brand clothes and car that his daddy's money bought him. He did nothing to earn the money; he was just lucky enough to be born into it. This guy's arrogance made me so frustrated. I know there's high rollers at most auctions. I just wasn't expecting one at a friendly high school fundraiser auction. But oh how I love auctions - even when dumb stuff like that happens.

We had good time overall and were able to get some cool things through the silent auction. We definitely came home with more than we anticipated and our house has been totally "Asianfied"!

Here's some photos of our purchases:

A rice box. Apparently this box is meant to hold rice, but I'm assuming this one was just painted for decorative purposes.

This is something Chris really wanted. They are some sort of hand exercise weights from China. Why he wanted them, I'll never know, but to each their own.

Chris surprised me by bidding on this during the silent auction. I have a thing for pearls, so he thought I might like this multi-strand necklace. I do!

This is a Japanese vase that has different paintings all around it. If anyone can read Japanese, could you let me know what it says? Hopefully not something like, "He who buys this is a sucker."

These are terra cotta solider statues. When I first heard the story about the terra cotta soldiers, I was really intrigued by it, so when I saw these today, I immediately bid on them!

This is a beautiful vase that is much more gorgeous in person. It has really pretty paintings on it with a really nice finish. It's really big...probably 3 feet tall or so.

This is a jewelry box I won. I bid on a beautiful one during the public auction but it went higher than I was willing to pay. Imagine my delight when I won this one in the silent auction!

A smallish chest I won in the silent auction. I also have a thing for chests so I was drawn to a lot of them at the auction. I think this one looks more like a chest you'd see inside a cottage than one you'd see in Asia, but I liked it nonetheless.

Now this is awesome. This is a motorcyle rocking horse. This thing is solid. It is quite heavy and I don't think it would be possible for Charlotte to break this thing. It will be so cute when she's old enough to ride it! It will be her first introduction to a motorcycle! Haha!

This was a bargain chest I decided to get last minute. No one bid on it during the silent auction, so they discounted the starting bid by 75%. I wouldn't have paid the initial bid price, but I figured it was worth what I ended up paying for it.

I'm sorry I have no Tiffany lamps to share...annoying Bahraini! Hopefully next year! :-)