Yesterday was a Arabic only day. I went to Downtown and bought some more movies for children on DVD because these films are very convenient listening comprehensions, additionally I got new arabic letters for my keyboard because the old ones started to peel off. In the afternoon I met the girl from the fast food restaurant, Amal, and her fiance and we walked around in Downtown, sat in a cafe and they helped me finding the post office which I failed to locate by myself because the main post office is under construction at the moment and I just did not identify it. Then we met some of her colleagues who work like her for a political party. One of them took me to another friend in the evening. Fardouz works as a travel guide and speaks German and while her husband taught my companion some English we studied Arabic. It got very late and all of us were pretty tired so when her babyboy woke up hungry we left and headed back to Downtown by bus. We will probably meet again on Tuesday.

Today I got my first lesson in the language school in Mohandesseen. After two hours mainly talking I walked back to Downtown. I crossed the Nile encircled by cars and then immerged into the comparative silence of Zamalek, a big island which is a domestic area with some embassies. Walking around I saw a lot of pretty old buildings, some of them empty, and many guardians. While the embassy of the Netherlands shone like a precious gem with its white walls the only thing I could see of the German embassy were grey walls with steel hooks around it and the national colours painted to the guardian's huts.

Crossing the bridge to Downtown again a lot of green attracted my attention. It seems usual to use the space beneath the bridges for gardening because of the availability of water there. I saw mainly succulents but also dracaena, yucca and patches with beautiful flowers I could not identify because they were to far away. After strolling around for three hours I had dinner in Cafe Riche and then went back to my hotel room to rest a bit. Later I may meet my Iraqi friend but that's not for sure. It would be fine for me to stay in the hotel and study too - Cairo is just crazy and exhausting, but still, I like it.