sava

our last day in santorini i got a very good feeling about the people living there. we were eating in a small restaurant - if you could call it that. we had eaten there twice before. there are only ten tables, half outside half inside. the same man - sava - takes your order and cooks your meal for you. the place is called savas and its more like being in someones house. sava is an old man. the only others we saw were an old woman, a middle aged woman, and a young girl of maybe 13. our last day the girl helped bring out food and take orders. it seemed like that would almost be part of your chores if you lived there. i mean, rather than thinking of it as putting a kid to work in any way, it was just what you did. she came back with her friends, helped a little, and then im sure took off again. everyone on the island knew one another it seemed. people were always waving and honking at passersby on the streets. once a small boy brought some sort of note to sava and ran off again. it was just a cute little community. i was trying to imagine what it would be like to grow up there and it made me smile. it seemed very homey - the whole island. the amount of tourists would make me crazy, but other than that, it seemed it would be interesting to grow up there. there would always groups of kids on bikes riding around and hanging out. anyway, savas was a nice place. when we went to leave and wait to be picked up (the people who owned where we were staying said they would pick us up at savas and take us to the airport - i think they have a deal or something because they knew wed eat there) sava made us sit back down. he didnt want us to wait out front, he told us just to stay there. then when the guy picking us up almost missed us sava clapped a few times loudly and the guy stopped. it was an all-over good experience. :-)