School in London - Accommodations

Notes about my  accommodation: 

First let me say that my hostess Mrs. Balali and her daughter Hoda were very pleasant and extremely helpful, emphasizing that we should just make ourselves at home during our stay. 

Food: As to specifics, however, there are some holes here: my arrangement called for 4 dinners a week as well as breakfast but in fact breakfast is little more than dry cereal and toast made at our discretion (that’s OK) but coffee and tea are available only if we make it ourselves apparently. Dinner so far (1) has been unimpressive: no vegetables or greens or fruit (also no fruit in the morning) only rice, potatoes and meat(balls); dish of ice cream for dessert. I have taken to getting fruit where I can during the day or on my way into central London. We’ll see what future dinners bring – I can see though that eating out will be more frequent than I had originally planned.

Week 1:

Meal no. 2 was a bit better: roasted potatoes, baked chicken and sautéed broccoli but with a little cup of store-bought choc mousse for dessert. Water only is offered with dinner.

Meal 3 I missed because I ran late at school but when I got back they were just finishing and it appeared to be pasta with a tomato sauce and store-bought loaf of sliced bread.

Meal 4 consisted of a Persian rice dish (onion and broccoli I think), which was good and baked salmon with a yogurt sauce, which was also very nice, and potatoes.

Week 2:

Monday’s meal was really quite mediocre, picture meat loaf cut into slabs like bacon and then broiled (I think) in some kind of greasy gravy served with a HEAPING bowl of “chips” (a huge bag of French fires it would seem), although there was some iceberg lettuce cut up on the side as well.

Tuesday I skipped ostensibly because I planned on working late in the city which was true although I also stopped at a nearby restaurant on my home for couscous and shish kebab . Anyway by the time I got home the group was still eating dinner so I stopped in and said hi. Soodabeh was not feeling well – she looked tired – and the evening meal consisted of the UK’s version of KFC with each diner eating out of their own box of “chips”. In any case, it looked quite unappealing and certainly not very healthy. 

Wednesday I ate a large lunch and got back late in any event.

Thursday was pretty good by comparison with the other meals. Pork loin broiled with soy sauce, small round potatoes sautéed and fresh green beans. 

Week 3:

Monday – good meal this evening: rice and sautéed chicken (flavor slightly reminiscent of 5-spice powder)

Tuesday - boiled potatoes out of a can I think and meatballs, both in roughly equal proportions sharing my plate and all swimming in a fairly tasteless yellow-orange sauce..

Wednesday – had to eat out again, not so much because I worked late but for the more obvious reasons of I can only take so much of the food in the house.

Thursday – chili con carne with rice. OK. Good conversation with Soodbaeh’s son Eissa, who is half-Raqi (Shia) and half-Iranian. 

Week 4:

Monday – roast chicken with potatoes and broccoli

Tuesday – pasta with a meat sauce and a salad

Wednesday – eating out with Joerig from Switzerland

Thursday – Richard and I ate out at a wonderful Indian restaurant in West Hampstead.

Friday – I ate my final meal at Shish in Willesden Green.

The house is located an easy 10-minute walk from the Tube station (18 minutes into Central London) and in a quiet residential neighborhood (as promised). Just a 2-minute walk away is a large and very nice green area, park really, and is a great place for strolling. The actual room itself is unimpressive, particularly since this is the top tier of accommodations available through the school: the bathroom is OK although rather narrow and the fan runs on a timer (annoying) while the water pressure in the shower is minimal to say the least but certainly nothing to complain about. Furniture is spartan – the desk chair collapsed the second day and broke apart; it was actually already in the processing of collapsing when I moved in and Mrs. Balali knew about this and promised to replace it but it broke first late one evening and I got a replacement from her son, a hard folding chair (small detail but may prove important).

At the end of four weeks the room had been cleaned only once and linen changed only once.