Activist doing hard time in Russian cell Greenpeace activist Alexandra Harris. Photo: Dmitri Sharomov She spends 23 hours a day in a draughty Russian prison cell, with Arctic blizzards blowing outside. She is allowed to leave her cell and walk outside in what she describes as "an outdoor chicken pen" for just one hour a day. Greenpeace activist Alexandra Harris, a 27-year-old permanent Australian resident and British citizen, has written to her Sydney manager James Lorenz, describing how she passes the time dreaming of running into her family's arms. Ms Harris, of Manly, was one of a group of 30, including 28 Greenpeace activists, a freelance photographer and a videographer, who were charged with piracy by Russian authorities after they attempted to scale a state-owned oil platform in a protest against drilling in the Arctic last month. On Thursday, Russia's federal Investigative Committee dropped piracy claims against the group, including three Australian residents, but replaced them with hooliganism charges which carry a jail term of up to seven years, instead of 15 years for piracy. Ms Harris passes the time in her Murmansk cell desperately trying to keep her mind occupied. "I try to keep myself 'busy' with little things like doing the laundry, sweeping the floor and doing exercises," she wrote. We're allowed to leave our cell and walk for one hour each day. We're locked in what can be described as an outdoor chicken pen [to walk]. It's horrible. But yesterday I saw that someone had scratched 'Save the Arctic' into the wall. It made me laugh. In a letter penned on October 10, a week before she appeared in court and her bid for bail was denied, Ms Harris told Mr Lorenz she had begun to pray. "I honestly believed I'd be out of prison by now," she wrote. I'm slowly coming to terms with the prospect of spending two months here. But it's not knowing what will happen after that that I find really hard. I prayed for the first time in my life the other day. I prayed for freedom and courage. In a separate letter to her family published in Britain's Guardian, Ms Harris said she feared spending winter in the prison, which is inside the Arctic circle. Daily average temperatures for October range from minus 6 degrees to 1 degree. "It's very cold now," she wrote. It snowed last night. The blizzard blew my very poorly insulated window open and I had to sleep wearing my hat. I'm nervous about spending winter here. I have a radiator in my cell but it's the Arctic breeze that makes the place very cold. Mr Lorenz said: "It's great to see Alex is hanging onto both humour and hope, although things are obviously really tough for her in Murmansk." The Russian Foreign Ministry said it would not recognise the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in a case mounted by the Netherlands to immediately free the activists. A spokeswoman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said a dual national and an Australian permanent resident, both British citizens, were receiving consular support from British consular officials.