2 days & $2+million

every year, the mister and i head out to the Punahou Carnival early Friday morning to make our contribution to the richest school in America.  can you believe that they generate over $2million in profit in two days just from the carnival?!  amazing!  the money raised goes towards funding 400 scholarships :) 

anywho, we're usually in and out within an hour since we arrive early and stand in line for scrips before the booths even open and then split up the food booth duties. 

this year, we strayed from the status quo because i wanted to check out the famed White Elephant as it's dubbed as one of the best thrifting opportunities in the islands. i knew there would be early birds but nowhere did i expect the lines to look like this at 10:30 am (fair opens at 11:00 am).

this tiny panoramic doesn't do the crowd justice.
let me see if i can figure out how to make a linky for this.

the lines for Treasures (the true high value antiques) and the regular White Elephant were over 100 people deep each!  knowing that my time was limited, i decided to wait in the Treasures line thinking that the items here would be more interesting.  but then the gal in front of me said that they only let in 20 people at a time so i decided to move to the larger White Elephant side thinking that i would get in sooner as they probably let in like 30-40 people at a time.

i really needed to witness what kind of stuff they had in here because goodness gracious, most people were walking out with HUGE BOXES like this lady.  

good thing i had an umbrella because i waited for over an hour just to get into the blue and white tent!  and when i finally got in, i didn't have much time to browse because the mister had already picked up all the food and was ready to head back to the office.  

there's a lot of stuff for sale -- games, toys, clothes, shoes, furniture, appliances, etc, etc. -- and people come ready to buy!  

because the donations come from families with connections to the richest school in the country, the quality of items is supposed to be better than your average Goodwill or Salvation Army...and this is what seems to drive allllll the masses of people here.

unfortunately, the food looked better than it tasted.  i usually love the gyros but this year, the "meat" was scarce and dry.

the portuguese bean soup was missing its namesake beans and portuguese sausage and was super watered down. 

the malasadas were aight but i didn't like the fact that they put a one dozen limit per customer.  and they seem to shrink in size every year.  we needed 3 dozen so i had to stand in line two times (i begged one of the students to give me 2 dozen in one order the first time i was in line).  when i waited in line the second time around, the guy in front of me had $80 in scrips...all for malasadas!  but they didn't make him wait in line again!  HOW RUDE.  

oh yeah...almost forgot to report that they also ran out of my favorite teri burgers so we ended up getting a cheeseburger.  what the heck?

so next year's plan is to skip all the hot food and attack the jams & jellies line to purchase 1 case (12 ea) of mango chutney and 1 case of lilikoi butter, which we normally don't buy...and arrive at 9 am for the White Elephant.  hehe.