Away from it all.

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In Lyudmila Georgevna's lesson this morning we spoke about adoption, especially of Russian children to european and american families. It was good to have another debate as a group, and the articles we were given were useful. There are more than a million children in Russia with no parents. Some have died, many have abandoned them as alcoholism or drugs have ruined their own lives. Christa used to work in an orphanage in Russia, and said that the lady in control of it was as cruel as she could imagine.

Natasha invited a lot of us to her dacha in the afternoon. I felt slightly guilty for leaving the flat again when I hadn't done any work for my essay, but on such a beautiful day an invitation to a summer cottage was too good to turn down. We took a marshrutka van twenty minutes out of town, then waited for a small boat to take us across a lake. On the other side there was a village of simple wooden cottages, each one painted in a bright colour and each with its' own allotment. Many Russians own a dacha, where they grow vegetables, spend some weekends and will eventually live after they retire.

We all thought we had come to relax for the afternoon, until Natasha's friend Tanya very matter-of-factly told the girls to make a salad from the ingredients in the fridge, and ordered the boys to go to the bottom of the garden to chop wood. We all grumbled, but it turned out to be one of the best parts of the day. Myself, Johani and Alexandre had a macho log-splitting contest using an axe with a wonky blade that we thought might have flown into the air any minute; only Johani knew what he was doing but between us we but got the job done. We made a big show of rolling our sleeves up and wiping imaginary sweat from our foreheads, whenever the girls were watching from the kitchen window.

The girls, led by Kaisa, made a banquet. There were five salads, each made from different measures of egg, potato, olives, lettuce, mayonnaise, cheese. a jar of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. To go with them there were three loaves of fresh black bread - that I cut through with more effort than was needed for the logs - and a box of white wine. Artem and Masha, Natasha's friends, made a barbecue in the garden by putting our chopped wood into a metal bin and grilling chicken breast kebabs over the fire.

When everything was ready we laid the table on the verandah of their banya and collected every spare chair and wine or vodka glass from the dacha's loft. The sixteen of us sat down and ate for an hour, but were all too tired and impressed with the food to say anything other than small talk. It was the best part of the day for a picnic, as the sun was starting to go down but still had warmth in it.

Afterwards we went for a walk around the dachas. The houses are small but there are a lot of them, so the village takes up a large area. Dusty paths wind around each plot of land, which was fun for anyone on one of the bikes that we found in the shed and even better for the two people who's turn it was on the tandem. The last boat back to 'the mainland' left at 9, and typically we weren't ready to leave. We stayed to clear the table, replaced the plates and bowls with a samovar and sixteen cups of tea, and watched the sun go down. Natasha's grandparents joined us and stayed for a chat.

When we left we got lost in the woods, and it took us three hours to walk home. If it wasn't for Mirka's giggling fit and Alexandre opening a bottle of vodka at about midnight the road home would have seemed even longer and scarier.

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