My lungs, they hurt. My head, it aches.

NOTICE: The gov't has managed to find and disable Gladder, the only way we foreigners were able to scale the Great Firewall, so I can no longer access my blog even though I can keep posting to it. So if you have comments feel free to e-mail me directly.

I'm not quite sure how anyone survives here long-term. Pollution has settled in at what I assume are normal levels for Beijing, or Gray-jing as Aki calls it, and it's really getting to me. Gone are the breezy, clear blue skies of last weekend. From what I gather, it's all downhill from here.

Tonight, after a full week of Chinese food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I felt the strong need to branch out and get some non-East-Asian food. There was a cool looking Russian place in our Time Out Beijing called Kiev Restaurant, and since it was in the Haidian district we figured it'd be pretty close by. With traffic, it still took about 25 min to get there.

There were some middle-aged Chinese businessmen smoking and shooting the shit outside this neon-emblazoned shack-looking thing, and nowhere did it say "Kiev Restaurant."

But as soon as we stepped in and saw the portraits of Caucasian-looking people lining the staircase, we knew we were in the right place. It was underground, what looked like a German beer hall, and we were ushered to a free table by a very polite Chinese waiter in a Russian embroidered shirt. Soon after we sat down, this band of portly Russian men strutted out in military uniforms and sang some very stirring opera:



I was nervous about getting enough pictures and video, but I shouldn't have worried, because 5 minutes later the whole group came out again in a very boisterous traditional song (gotta love his little dance moves and sailor outfit).



Meanwhile, we ordered up a storm. Starting with Beijing beer and a very good stout. One of our party is painfully meat-and-potatoes, so he ordered plain ole' garlic bread and meat sauce spaghetti (at least the menu had something for everyone). The rest of us got really excited about the more traditional Russian/Ukrainian food. We had:

Grilled Beef Kabobs

Potato latkes topped with mushroom and dill

This delicious lamb stew with carrots, which came topped with this doughy thing that trapped all the heat and steam inside. Don't poke it, Aki!

And then, we couldn't help but giggle at bad Engrish peppered throughout the menu, such as this:

"Cheese Backed Associated Meats"