How has your life changed in Greece

I live in Greece ten years now and i could say the experience made me a happier person, I don't know if it's the weather or the people here (both warmer than in northern europe), but i believe it influenced me positively.
I have made friends here with whom i have warm contact, living in Greece has made it easier for me to meet people.

Financially it's more difficult, but that doesn't influence my happyness (so much).

I could say that my stay here in Greece changed my life at least 7 on a scale of 0 to 10.

Dear Priscilla,here are some answers to your invitation as to my life changes here in Greece.Well,I dont visit Norman, Saxon churches anymore,I dont see daffodils,I dont dont walk about looking at pretty front gardens or seeing back gardens from my window.The history I see in buildings is only ancient sites,there is nothing in between that and mostly ugly concrete flats.Down in Athens I see Neo Classical buildings yes.Coffee and English breakfast in the church on Saturday morning with a chat for just 1.50,coffee after the Sunday service,free,a chat with the FEMALE vicar,and being invited to go for early Sunday breakfast before service at my local church,Christmas get together at my church hall.Boot sales that are everywhere..oh the bargains,you can get everything for very little money from jewels to face creams(new) books,antiques,in fact the full monty,and they have bacon sandwiches there and hot tea,such pleasure used to be mine despite any cold North Easterly winds whipping around ones torso which people brace themselves against by wearing those old pilot type hats which come down the neck and over the ears,they look daft but are as warm as toast.Everyone had them on one winter I took a visit and I thought..thank goodness Im not with those Greeks who are just too prissy about what they wear.Drop them in Antarctica and they would give you their entire estate for that hat ha.A huge life change was dealing with nasty corrupt property agents and their circle of cronies,but they have gone now like the property market here which has left many like myself unable to sell and thus move on.The on going financial mess here has left my husband and I unhappy and insecure because its all so depressing as they take more and more of my husbands wages which will surely continue due to the fact that we have less and less people working to pay for pensions and social services,all those that can leave will, and are.It now takes ten working peoples contributions per month to pay one months pension to someone,it used to take four.So i guess pensions will be down to two hundred per month in the not too distant future,thats a worry, but of course it applies generally across many countries now but not all.For my scale I would give it ..9...some changes have been for the better,but the worst thing has been feeling like a Alien,an outsider,as they say here,,an Xeni..I was called it the other day,I dont bother to try and talk to them much,just rude dogs sometimes.I dont tell them I can understand what they are saying and their rudeness,I grunt from time to time, I do think Greek is a wonderful language but even when they talk with each other its all surface talk,no depth of character really.My standard of living is probably what it would have been had I stayed in UK but it gets worse here now,the few working here will take the burden of the unemployed bill until we are paying sixty percent tax,forty six per cent goes from my husbands wages each month in stoppages as it is now.The greatest thing I miss from England and the biggest change has been the lack of organisation right across the board here,the absolute hopeless  managerial skills in this country,the inability of central and local government to do right by the citizens for what they are paid to do by the citizens so as to make this a better place to live in will never change and thats what hurts the most,this is a sunny beautiful country but humans cannot live by the sun alone.Nature can provide us with many things but we ourselves must help create a society fit to live in and see that it functions to serve all sections without corruption and cronyism otherwise the hammer will fall on our heads as it has to Greece.PS,I forgot to say that I want to go home,I miss country lanes and hedgerows where wild strawberries grow,I have picked them down in Devon and I long to return.