Our home in the southern suburbs of Athens is close to the mountains and minutes from the beach, which many believe is envious. I’m not convinced of that.

Sure, I like the sight of trees from my window, the walking trail and the open fields next door where I can hear “the nightbird” (gionis) birp all night. But as it looks more like summer, our area is choked with more traffic, more pulsing music at all hours and more bugs.

Today was a very buggy and birdy type day. After getting only disturbed sleep from another noisy night, I opened sliding doors to both the front and back balconies to get a cross draft. Within hours, a bird had flown into the house because (of course) there are no screen doors. As it flapped furiously, I cursed the fact I couldn’t pass this task to my fiancé and chased it around the house with hopes I could return it safely outside again. Done.

I go into the kitchen, and a green bean on the counter starts moving — it’s a hoppity green grasshopper. How it got in, I don’t know since the window wasn’t open. I put a Tupperware bowl over him and left a note for the man of the house to take him outside. He didn’t, as he thought it would be amusing if I dealt with that too. Fine. I slip a piece of paper under the bowl and release him outside, and (strangely) a man in NY who calls me ‘grasshoppa’ sends me an e-mail after that.

My fiancé had the idea of taking a drive along the beach and stopping at a no-name taverna to get something to eat for a change of pace, but within minutes we encountered roads choked with traffic and turned back. Apparently everyone had the same idea.

Arriving home, we both smack at a yellow jacket before I’m told my swatting duties are not needed, the door is closed and the incident is over…or so it seems. After it was flattened and squashed into a napkin, I found he’d crawled out of the garbage can and was struggling for life on the kitchen floor. Admirable. That’s what my friend Niko calls, “duro, duro.”

I happily took a phone call from friends G and C visiting from Sweden. I was supposed to meet them on Rhodes sometime during their two weeks, but honestly couldn’t see spending more than a month’s wages on a few days within Greece when I can get better value by visiting them in SE instead. Anyway, I need a break from Greece after being here continuously for two years. It turned out fine since they were busy doing the ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ tour with three young children, entertaining relatives who joined them for a portion of their vacation, and visiting several villages to see dozens here. They depart exhausted, needing a vacation to recover from their vacation.

I love talking to them because they spent a year on sabbatical in Greece during my first year here, so we share a common history of learning Greek, dealing with dysfunctional landlords, scaring away kamaki and delighting in old yellow trolleys that jerked and stalled. They also helped me move out of my cockroach house in Plaka at 6:00 one morning. We had a good laugh about that tonight.

Hours later, I went into the bathroom we just cleaned yesterday and what was on the shower wall? A cockroach the size of a yam. Blah! No Tupperware, no releasing into the wild, just a good old-fashioned smack with a flip flop and off to the eternal nap!

Apparently, my critter karma is fully zen. Kala ohm!

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On May 28th, after months of careful deliberation about this site’s future, An American in Athens became livingingreece.gr

Many know me and this site as An American in Athens, and this will continue to be true so it’s not necessary to change the name (just the link). However, I know that many people bypassed or discounted this Web site as purely a blog of no value to them or disrespected me as a writer based on the name alone. In fact, only one-fourth of this Web site is personal, while the majority of articles are practical and based on meticulous research and 11 years of wisdom and experience. After a year, the site is very content heavy and something needed to be done.

My stats have suffered a dramatic hit since the change, which I knew in advance, and my special feature box on Google is now gone (wah! ). But the mission has always been about providing quality information in the long term and not worrying about hits in the short term, so I believe this site will eventually rebound.

All permalinks will automatically redirect to the new one without incident, but I would appreciate if everyone would update the link if you’d like to keep me around, and RSS readers and Google alerts should be changed to livingingreece.gr to continue receiving notifications. There will be a day in the near future when americaninathens.com and livingingreece.gr co-exist on the same site, but there is a larger metamorphosis in progress right now to give everyone a better reader experience.

Thank you to everyone who has shown me continued support!

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This will be my last post about OTE (On The Exodus) and our shoddy ADSL connection because it’s on the way out of our lives.

We again had no online access this past week like so many weeks before, but OTE continues to make promises it hasn’t kept. These empty promises have cost me precious money and work opportunities I can no longer afford to lose, with no apology, no compensation and absolutely no change in service for the past 6 months we’ve lived in this supposedly “good” area.

I am hopeful this Vodafone wireless solution is more reliable. It’s the same price and a lot more convenient for the same speed, so it’s already gotten my attention…and respect.

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Loyal friends and readers have probably noticed that I’ve not posted anything new for the past 2 weeks, which is the longest I’ve stayed silent in this site’s short history. At first the black hole was due to the amount of work on my plate, then it was because a hungry mosquito feasted on my writing hand, which swelled the size of an orange. Now, I don’t seem to have a reason.

My vision for this site was to present information not already covered in a clear, accurate and realistic way, whether it be practicalities of living/working in Greece, unique stories from my life that entertained and served a larger purpose, or topics given little or no attention in the news. After all, what’s the point of sinking time and effort into something regurgitated or done to death?

Wednesday night on Apodeixeis, I watched Nikos Evangelatos present an entire show on how Greece is the “king of expensive” when comparing prices of the same items elsewhere in the EU. Hey, no kidding. I first reported this fact in June 2007, during which I was not paid thousands of euros to appear on TV, but compensated by being called a liar, stupid, unfair and ill informed about Greece, then had the pleasure of being ridiculed in Greek forums and plagiarized by a Greek newspaper that will be forced to appear before an Ethics Committee at my request.

Facts are not my invention, all I am is a messenger with a mirror from which many choose to look away. Greek friends give me excellent material for this site all the time, but I know I’ll be crucified if I write certain stories and often wonder if it would have been better to lie about my nationality so the focus would be on the actual story and not who wrote it.

I’m deftly aware my country isn’t perfect, no country is. If I wasn’t aware of it, I’ve got a dozen people a day shoving it in my face on the bus, on the street, in the grocery store, at public sector offices, at work, and almost anywhere I vacation. I can shrug it off, but it’s boring and annoying nonetheless. So I ask myself, why the hell am I willingly maintaining a Web site that essentially invites that same grief into my home, in addition to plagiarism, legal action and neuroses? It used to be because it was fun, but lately there’s a part of me that believes my time would be better spent elsewhere.

A man in Australia whom I call a friend told me there are times that “remind <him> how embarrassing it can be to be Greek.” I understand what he means because I feel the same way about being American. I told him that being Greek is a great thing in which to take pride, just like being American can be. But we have our crosses to bear for the idiots of this world, who unfortunately claim the same nationality. All we can do is keep being who we are and break those stereotypes.

I have done everything I can to be an ambassador during my 11 years abroad, but I will not give up my inherent right to be a truthteller. And those two roles are not in conflict with each other.

I love Greece in a completely different way than I love my own country, and I am compassionate toward all people regardless of nationality…but being blind or in denial is not a part of that. Love is not unquestionable allegiance, painful longing, putting your beloved on a pedestal and seeing only perfection. This brainlessness is called being ‘in love.’

True love is what’s left when those feelings are gone, when you finally see the flawed glory of the person or thing you love for who and what they really are, and embrace those imperfections and grow together to create an inexplicable bond. That’s what I mean when I use the word ‘love,’ and this is the bond I have with Greece.

There was yet another incident involving this Web site on Sunday, and it was necessary I remove it from public view for 48 hours while I set the proper action in motion and take a detoxification period. I choose not to say more at this time, but the truth will come out.

* Hat tip to VV, a longtime reader, and PM who put me in touch with a valuable connection