Animal News

Well, some great news. The rooster is gone! I'm sure it's not gone forever, I think cock-fighting season is starting up, and maybe it's gone somewhere for training. But it doesn't wake me up at 5am anymore!

Also, I found an animal I like. Baby goats! They are so cute and so friendly. This one wanted to nuzzle the camera so much i couldn't really get a picture. Man, they are cute, maybe I'll get one someday. The problem is what to do with it when it grows up, because I don't particularly love adult goats.

Address Again

Okay, for all of you who are going to send me stuff (mom), here is, I think, the final word on how to mail me things.

If you're sending me a letter or card, send it to the PC headquarters in Manila:
PCV Laura Eley
PNB Financial Building, 6th floor bayside
Diosdado Macapagal Avenue
Pasay City, Philippines

To send me a package, send it right to my site:

Laura Eley
c/o Sir Boy Oberez
Cadiz West II Elementary School
Cabahug St.
Cadiz City, Negros Occidental
Philippines, 6121

Oh, that silly American

Here's something I'm glad no one saw me do. But I will share the story with you guys. Every morning when I get up for school, everyone else has either already left the house or is still sleeping. So I prepare my own breakfast. Yesterday I made myself oatmeal. There are two canisters on the sideboard, one i knew had sugar in it. But I opened it up, and there was no more sugar. The other canister had red sugar in it. Red sugar is pretty good, I think I like it better than white sugar. So I thought I would put red sugar on my oatmeal. I didn't put too much, because I'm always thinking about cavities, and how sugary all the food is here. Well, the oatmeal did not taste right. It tasted kind of sweet, but mostly wierd. I thought "what did I just put on my oatmeal?" I opened the canister and tried the red sugar. And found out it was iced tea. yum, iced tea oatmeal.



Okay, and here are some pictures of some kids at my school crossing the 'bridge' from one classroom to another, after heavy rains last night.

You Will Go To The Moon!

I found a book in the library today that is written for elementary school students that isn’t a textbook! It’s called “You Will Go To The Moon” copyrighted 1959. Cool, huh? If you click on the pictures they will zoom in.

More Pictures

Hey everyone. I'm almost finished with my second week as a volunteer. So far, it hasn't been too bad. It's different, being the only American here, and a little boring, especially at night. But I'm managing to stay busy and hopefully soon my big projects will start to happen. Here's some pictures of my first couple weeks. I know the pictures never line up quite right, and too bad, I don't know how to fix it. You can figure out what the pictures are of.

First, we have a bus ON a boat. I took the bus from Cebu city, onto a bus at Toledo, across to San Carlos, then up to Cadiz City. I got off the bus while it was on the boat, and sat in the boat cabin. It was a pretty cool thing.

Here is the sign they made for me for my welcome program. I had to give a speech in Ilonggo, which was terrifying, but at least I didn't really know how badly i was butchering the words. My host mom and brother 'helped' me write it. (okay, they wrote it for me.) Some of the kids did dance routines and stuff.







Here is my library. Some bookshelves with outdated encyclopedias and 30 year old basal readers. And my desk. It's quite a nice place to work, actually.

And these are two little boys that came in to the library to make faces at me and laugh one afternoon. Aren't they cute? Usually i have about 20 kids standing around staring at me after school, so lately I've started closing up early and going and chatting with other teachers instead of sitting there talking to kids in ilonggo and they don't answer me, they just stand there. Soon I'd like to start doing read-alouds after school, so they have a reason to come and stare at me and not say anything.

I hate roosters

I just wanted to remind all of you living in your cozy little urban houses in America, that roosters are stupid. I think I am starting to adjust to the one outside my window, because today at 5am, when it started crowing, instead of waking up, the noise turned into a German lady yelling at me in my dream. That's a step in the right direction. maybe.

But once again, this post is not about roosters. I think I can post some pictures now. This may not work, so if it doesn't, be patient, and maybe someday it will. This is the fun party cabin on the overnight ferry from Iloilo to Cebu for swearing in. The Farvers on the left, Anna, and Eli. Here is Erin, me, and Anna, all spiffied up for swearing in.
And this is Erin and Anna testing our makeshift 3-person bed to see if it will roll apart in the night if we thrash around a lot in our sleep. It moved a lot during their test, but when we actually slept on it, we didn't trash around nearly so much, and the beds pretty much stayed together. It was way more comfortable sleeping three across this bed than taking turns on the cot from the spanish inquisition each night.

Crazy School

Well, I'm all sworn-in as a volunteer, and I have the pictures to prove it. But it's true, I am now a real volunteer. I have moved into my new host family's house in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental and yesterday was the first day of school. Some crazy things about school here:

The first day, (and hopefully this will change) the parents of the first graders stood outside the classroom all day. Students would just get up and go outside to talk to mom or mom would come in and give them a snack. Nobody really seemed to mind.

People can walk around selling things. They even come in the classrooms while class is going on. I got offered quite a lot of pearl necklaces. The snack selling people are okay, they aren't too pushy, and I might actually want to buy a snack. But necklaces?

My principal told me he would set up an office for me and get me a desk, but it didn't sound like it would happen anytime soon. This morning I sat down at the communal table in the main office to do my work. That afternoon, one of the teachers told me they had a desk all set up for me in the library, with an electric fan even! That's great for me, because it gives me a lot of freedom to come and go.

I've been observing classes, mostly first grade for now. Mostly I'm learning how they teach, what the schedule is like, etc. But it is so depressing watching class. As I watch, I really WANT to go back to the states and teach. Everything is depressing. The way they teach, by writing something on the board and all the kids repeat it together, over and over. The supplies. There is nothing for the teacher to work with but the chalkboard. No worksheets, manipulatives, overhead, text books, classroom books, maps, nothing. Also it's so hot. And the kids sit at their desks all day, there is no activity that doesn't take place at the desk. It's just sad to watch, and I know it's not a problem I can help with. The most I can hope to do is introduce the teachers to some teaching methods that will get the kids out of their seats once in a while, and maybe encourage them to read on their own. Also the class sizes are around 35-40 kids.

So I've spent a lot of time working on problems in my head. How do we teach reading without books? How do we teach more effective ways of reading without any materials? And so on.

The schedule, when I saw it on paper, looked brutal. Classes from 7:30-12. An hour break, then class again from 1-4:30. WOW. well...it's not so tough. 11-12 is listed as 'remedial activities' and 'prep time' which means lunch break. so a 2 hour lunch. 9:30 is 'recess' which means morning snack and usually lasts a half hour or so. The afternoon classes generally end around 4, with of course another snack time around 2:30. And even much of the time not spent eating isn't always filled with learning. Time management was one of the things my principal asked me to help the teachers with. But that is so much a part of the culture, I'm not sure I even want to try and change it. And I mean, a 2 hour lunch? Who can argue with that?

One thing I'm not supposed to do is teach a class on my own. It's not sustainable. I can teach demo classes that the teachers watch, and I hope to do plenty of those. But already 3 teachers have asked me when I will come teach their class. It's hard to explain why I won't do that.

I've also been working in the library. I found two shelves, about 30 books or so, that aren't textbooks. They are mostly adult books, some self-help books, some novels, all pretty old. I started looking through them and found that about 20 of them came from the Denver Public Library!! I can't believe it! Someone at Cadiz West II elementary, Philippines, had a connection with DPL before I got here. What are the odds? Maybe DPL will be able to help me again, especially since I was once a volunteer for the read aloud program, not to mention the hundreds of dollars I've donated to them in library fines. We'll see.

That's the school update for now. Things settled down a little on the second day, and I think on Thursday there will be a staff meeting to formally introduce me to the teachers.

Leaving our host families

It’s time to say goodbye to my host family, as well as the hub staff here and all the other trainees. My host mother, Mommy Ann, took me and the girls (Sam and Bam) and their mom out to dinner on Thursday. We went to Afrique’s, which is an Italian restaurant, Filipino style. It is in a really cool old Spanish house in Iloilo. It was delicious. If anyone ever comes visit me, we will go there. It was a really cool place. Mommy Ann told the girls the house might be haunted, so they made me come to the bathroom with them and stand outside the door in case there were any ghosts. It was pretty cute, and whichever one was in the bathroom, the other one stood outside the door making spooky noises.

After dinner we went shopping, and the girls and I had a fun time looking at stuff, and buying ice cream and candy.

I left Lambuyao on Saturday morning with all my stuff. Everyone else is coming back after swearing in to get their stuff, but I will be going directly to Cadiz City, and had to haul it all with me now. My family, Erin’s family, Allan’s family, and Anna’s family rented a jeepney to take us and our junk to SEAFDEC, where we had a thank you party for the host families. We played games and ate a good lunch, and gave appreciation speeches. I gave my family two framed pictures of us, and some Denver souvenirs I still had. They gave me some cool beaded flip-flops, which I need because the rocky dirt road in Lambuyao has torn up my other pair. Probably the 2km community cleanup helped destroy them.

The host families left after lunch, and we made plans for me to come back the first weekend in August, which is my birthday and Sam’s birthday. It was nice living with them, they were a good host family. I’m worried about my new host family, because they seem a lot more formal and also they don’t have little kids to hang out with.

In the evening we had our own going away party at the hub site. We gave gifts to our staff, had a slide show, played some games, and did awards. I got the award ‘most acclimated.’ I got it as a joke, because nobody complains as much as I do about the heat, and about going swimming in the ocean. Most of the awards were funny. We did an activity where we put a piece of paper on everyone’s backs and went around writing nice things about them so that later, when you’re feeling depressed, you can read happy things from your friends. I was still in a bad mood about my final evaluation, so I read mine right away.

Our Community Activity

Wednesday the 24^th was our community activity. I wasn’t too confident about this working out. Nobody from the community helped us organize people to help paint the mural or gave us much support. At the last minute we added a community cleanup to the agenda, and the Barangay Captain liked that and got about 30 youth to commit to cleaning. Our little Peace Corps group thought we would clean the area around the livelihood center, where we would be painting the mural. However, 7:30 Wednesday morning, the Captain told us he wants us to lead the kids on a trash pick-up the entire length of the barangay road. It’s about 2.5 kilometers, which I don’t know how far it is in miles, but maybe about 1½ miles. Well, we had to stay positive and act excited, so we split in to groups and started picking up trash. The kids were doing alright, I wouldn’t say they were having fun, but they weren’t miserable. Of course it was hot, and by about 9 they were hungry and tired and so was I. We had bought snacks and I decided to turn our group around and get snack and start back where we left off after snack. But once we turned around the Captain told us to turn back and keep going, and he would bring snack to a place way up the road. Lots of grumbles from the kids, but here, you do what the Captain says you do. So we kept going. It was great when we finally got our snack. From that point we were only 100 yards or so from the end of the road, so after snack we quickly finished the trash clean up, and all the kids went home for a break about 10:00.
Everyone met back at the livelihood center at 1pm to work on the mural. That’s when our Community Development Coordinator, Che, showed up to see how our project was going. It took until 2 o’clock to get the outline drawn on the wall and start painting. We wanted the kids to participate in the painting, but the captain wanted only older kids to work on it, so it would look nice when it was done. We started painting, had snack, and kept painting. The mural turned out really nicely, and we were done by about 4pm. We were all exhausted, and I went home and took a nap!

Pictures and Stories

Okay. Here are some long overdue pictures and the stories to go with them. First we have me and my host sister, Sam. Someone came up with the 'sign' for Western Visayas, look carefully, it's a WV. So I taught it to Sam, and this is us being hardcore throwing down the WV sign.

The other day, we got roped into helping do a papaya tree planting along our road. We were all very tired, because we stayed up too late the night before, but we had to go out and show the community we supported their project - so that they would support ours. Here is Erin and I in full papaya-planting glory. Pok is in the background, sticking out his tongue.


This is the Philipino trike I have mentioned before. This one only has 11 people on it, not including the driver. You can fit more if you try. There are two girls sitting behind the driver, 4 in the sidecar, 3 kids on the roof, and a couple people hanging off the far side. Don't worry, I'm not allowed on the roof or the side. But I do sit behind the driver sometimes.

Here is me after a short day of working not very hard at Alvin's farm in Mia-gao. Sleeping on a shelf in a nipa hut, while it is gently raining outside is a most wonderful experience. It's just awesome. And extremely comfortable, despite appearances.

And finally, we have the outside of my new school, Cadiz West II elementary. There are actually many building on the campus, but this is the one with the sign. I think it houses the nurses office and the guidance office.

Typhoon!

Well everyone, I made it through my first typhoon! At first it wasn't scary, just like a big thunderstorm. We still went to class, but walking to class in a typhoon makes you very wet. We had a brownout, and the power was out for about 28 hours. When we were at class, our hub manager Sheila showed up in the LandCruiser and said that our site, Lambuyao, was flooding and they were going to evacuate us to our hub site, SEAFDEC, for the night. We all went home and got our overnight stuff and they drove us to seafdec in the land cruiser.

the drive was kind of scary. The wind was blowing and the rain was pounding down, but mostly it was scary at how quickly everything was flooded. And the people everywhere whose homes were flooded out and had nowhere to go. Transportation was really difficult, you couldn't get anywhere without a private car.

The evacuation was fun, though. It was me and Erin and Allan, and our teacher Anna, along with Sheila, Lynn, and Kevin who stay at the hub site. Kevin is the current PCV who has been in charge of our hub sessions. We all had dinner in the cafeteria, and then went to the guest house. We watched The Terminal and played hearts and went to bed. The next morning, it was still raining, and we had breakfast and an hour of language class. Back at the guest house, we baked oatmeal raisin cookies with Sheila and watched Ice Age 2. It was the best evacuation ever.

They took us back to our houses about 3pm on saturday. The brownout was still going on, but the power came back on a few hours later. It continuted raining until about 10am on Sunday, and things are starting to dry out. The rain was really nice for me, because for 2 days, I didn't sweat! Hooray! I even got to wear my sweatshirt at night, although it wasn't really that cold. I don't think I would like it to rain all the time though, things need a chance to dry! It's also difficult because brownouts happen all the time when it rains, and transportation comes to a standstill. My first typhoon was pretty cool, and the kids all had a great time playing in the rain, just like we would at home when there's a big thunderstorm.

Wansapanataym

The title of this post is the title of a movie showing on Filipino TV next week. If it looks like a rediculously long word in a strange language, try saying it out loud. slowly. Did you get it? Yep, this country is silly.

When the Rooster Crows At the Break of Dawn...

You know you're in the Philippines. I now have a rooster living 10 feet from my window. They crow whenever they feel like it, really. But mine likes to start at 5am, and continue ever 20 seconds - 2 minutes until around 8. They tell me I'll learn to sleep through it, but right now, I just hate roosters. However, I still hate the heat more, and either way, these pictures have nothing to do with either of those things.

Our town, Oton, had a festival last week, and there were 6 different 'tribes' competing in dancing competitions. It's not as ethnic or traditional as it sounds, as you can see, they wear t-shirts and jeans, and the dances are choreographed drama/dance routines. Our Lambuyao group (Me, Erin, Allan, and our teacher Anna) attended the opening ceremonies to cheer against the Tagbac group (Tim, Ross, Anna, and teacher Alvin). The street dancing competetion is the only thing we were able to watch. These pictures are of our tribe doing their dance. Yep, that kid is upside down on two bamboo ladders above a street. It was part of the dance. They do things big here. Then there's the 8 of us in our shirts, just after the opening festivities.

Kids!

Here's some of the kids I hang out with. This is Pok, of course, doing funny faces for the camera.
Here is Mel James, Erin's host brother. He's 12, and hangs out around us a lot. He's really fun, we like him a lot.
This is Nicole, the daughter of the videoke owner. She's adorable, and has really good English.

The Amazing Oton Race

The other day our teachers set up "The Amazing Oton Race" for us. We had to go all around our barangay, following clues (in Ilonggo) and solving puzzles. At first they made us be three-legged, and ross and I were tied together and losing miserably. Being an American, I quickly saw it was more efficient to not be tied together, and we all stopped being three legged, but we still had teams. We were neck and neck through the balut-eating session. [Balut is a local 'delicacy' where an egg is cooked after 12 days of incubation, so when you crack it open, you are eating a fetal chick, with feathers on and everything. Some of us have tried it, some haven't. I haven't.] At the balut-eating, I refused to eat it, and my team lost 100 points. But I didn't care, no one is going to make me eat balut, especially at 8:30 am when I've had no time to mentally prepare. I wasn't too worried, because we didn't seem to be earning or losing points for anything else, and I suspected the 100 point loss was more of a scare tactic. Turns out I was right. In the end, no penalty for not eating the balut except a loss of face. And I don't care about losing face, I'm not Filipino.

Anyway. We had to perform basic commands like sit, jump, sing, dance, etc. We had to collect fake money, count it, and tell the denominations in ilonggo. We had to try another food item, but this one was a sweet breakfasty food, so I stuffed my face. After that we had to complete a worksheet of ilonggo sentences. Here's a picture of Anna and Erin working on theirs.

Ross and I kicked everyone's butts at this point, because, you'll remember, I rock at Ilonggo. We pulled ahead, and had to go to the next house and list parts of the house and kitchen utensils. We weren't so hot on that one, but we fumbled our way through and were off. Our next stop was where we had to list 5 types of Filipino transportation. EASY. Eroplano, Jeep, Awto, Trike, Barco. We got 5 pesos and are next instructions. We went to the videoke and had to buy candy in Ilonggo. Beleive me, if there's one thing I learned quickly, it was how to buy junk food. After that, we had to put together the easiest puzzle in the world, and then Ross and I were the winners! Here's a pictures of Erin and Anna putting together their 4 piece puzzle while our teachers, Alvin and Anna, look on.

Ross and I won GIANT bowls of halo-halo. Here's a picture of Anna with our prizes. Halo-halo is a mix of shaved ice, jelly stuff, nuts, sugar, milk, and other random stuff. our Videoke makes the best halo-halo. Other places add stuff like cheese, beans, and wierd stuff like that. Ours is straight sugary goodness. It tastes wonderful on a hot day. Anyway, we won, and I couldn't finish even half of my Halo-Halo. Anna and Erin came in 2nd, and Tim and Allan finished last. We got medals and hung out for awhile, then had to go on with our real class. When I came home at lunch, my host kids had made a sign that said "CONGRATULATIONS MANANG LAURA! YOU DID IT! Sam, Bam and Pok." [Manang is like a respectful term for anyone, it's not very formal. They call me Manang Laura. So it was a fun race, and our teachers worked really hard on it.

Believe it or Not!!

Yes, believe it or not, this is a real picture of me handwashing my laundry at my house. Okay, helping to hand wash my laundry. I'm sure that if I did it all myself it would take hours and still my clothes wouldn't be very clean. Christine, our schoolgirl is helping me. We're not laughing because it's so much fun. It's not really any fun at all. We're laughing because Christine can't stop laughing at me trying to wash my own clothes. Everything I do is hilarious because it's so so wrong. And she broke into fits of giggles when she was washing the leg parts of my zip-off pants. She said "What is this!?" and tried it on like a sleeve. She couldn't breathe she was laughing so hard. I look so Peace Corps in this picture, but washing by hand sucks and as soon as I get to my site I will hire someone to do it for me. Lots of people do, we're helping the local economy! But for now I keep trying to wash things myself. With help.

Pictures!

This is my house! Everyone who knows something about houses says my house is really cool. My host father (who I have never met) is a visual artist so the house is covered with neat artwork. On the porch is my host-aunt Baby. The yard is really cool too, but my room is very small and hot.


While at SEAFDEC (our hub site) we had a barbeque on the beach one night. Kevin, a current PCV who leads our group, found this blue jellyfish. The little girl is Migi, one of the staff people's nieces.


Here I am with my host mother, Mommy Ann. This is at SEAFDEC, when he had just met.


Here is Pok, my host cousin. He is four, and he's hilarious. He talks to me a lot, but unfortunately I can't understand him. I always just say 'yea!' like with American 4 year olds I can't understand.


Here is our Hub group of Western Visayas. We are all freshly showered and dressed nicely to go meet the Barangay Captain, so we took advantage of it to take a picture. Here's who everyone is, starting with the big guy next to me. Front Row: Ward, Laura, RyAnn, Anna, Erin (Scott's wife), Alice, Erin D, Abby.
Middle and Back: Ross, Allan, Eli (RyAnn's Husband), Scott, Ian, Tim, Sean, and Kevin.

Host Family Time

Today marks the first week done with our host families. Everyone is having different experiences. Mine so far is good. my family is great, i really like them. My family is actually just one lady. Everyone calls her Mommy Ann, which is wierd to me, but it works.

Her husband, Boy, is a visual artist and they are very prominent in the community. In our house also lives Christine,who is about 14, and lives with Mommy Ann so she can go to school, because her house is too far from any school. In return she does a lot of the chores. This makes me feel strange, but it's not like she's a servant. She does things with us and is like a part of the family. She was very shy around me for a while, but as she was showing me how to wash my underwear, we bonded, and now she likes me and we're cool.

Our barangay (village) is called Lambuyao (Lam-boo-yow). It is outside the town of Oton,which is south of Iloilo city, on the island of Panay. It feels very rural. We live on a dirt road. We have roosters and there is nothing to do but videoke within walking distance. Videoke is ALWAYS within walking distance, no matter where you live. It's a national pastime.

The Barangay captian is an elected position, less than a mayor, but still important. Cap Axel is our barangay captain, and he is mommy ann's brother. His wife is Baby (names...i haven't figured them out...) and their 3 children are Samantha, Bam, and Pok. Sam is about 12 and lives with us. Bam is a girl, she is about 8, and basically lives with us, but sleeps with her parents in the house right behindo urs. Right behind means about 10 feet. Pok is 4 and also is usually around but lives with his parents. Those are the people I interact with everday. There are also plenty of other people i see, and everyone knows us.

Erin lives across the street and our teach Anna next to her. It's nice to be able to go to Erin's to study or have her come over and hang out. My family, unlike most everyone else's, is not overbearing or smothering. They don't make me eat things, although they like me to try new stuff. They don't insist that I'm not eating enough. They aren't constantly offering me things, it's very laid back and i have a lot of freedom, which is nice.

Mosquito nets are coo l,you feel like you're camping every night. But you are supposed to take them down in the morning. That's more of a pain than making my bed ever was, and i never bothered to do that.

It's just rediculously hot. More than anything, the heat is getting to me. Standing on a concrete floor dumping cold water on my head for a shower is fine. Carrying toilet paper with me because they don't use it here is fine. bug bites are fine. The heat is NOT FINE. I'm drinking lots of water, but probably not enough. We learned the word for cold, and we wondered if filipinos even know what it means to be cold. We suspect not.

Our barangay is getting ready for a big dance/drama competition coming up at the start of May. All the barangays around Oton compete. I'm sure we will win, we are awesome. It's really neat to watch the kids practice, they are goood dancers.

As my family says, I have 'first honors' in my language class. Out of 3 people, that's not too hard. But I am the best in the class. Today we started making sentences. whooo!! I can't tell you how much the spanish has helped me learn Ilonggo. I would be way worse off without it.

By the way, I got a cell phone. Peace Corps requires us to have one, and all the Filipinos have them. It seems contrary to the idea of why we're here to have a cell phone, but we're accepting it. So if anyone feels compelled to call from the other side of the world, let me know and I'll give you my number, and ask my parents how to make the call.

Mayong Gab-i! (Good evening!)

Okay, quick descriptions of the pictures. Carlos was our tour guide at Intramuros, an old walled city in Manila. He was HILARIOUS. Best tour of anything ever. Behind him is Boni, one of our PC Manila staff people.









This is Ian, one of the guys in my hub site (Western Visayas) doing Videoke. It's just Karaoke, but it's called Videoke. It's HUGE here. They had it for us our first night at the hub site, and Ian loves it. He is also 6'7", which in the Philippines is just ridiculously tall. Around his neck is a miniature mask that they gave each of us to welcome us.


















This is Anna, a girl in my hub site, and one of my friends. We were roommates at SEAFDEC, the campus we stayed at during hub. The room had A/C! And flushing toilets!! We get to go back in two weeks, and we're excited.

Fun Stuff

Our trainers have been holding our hands as we experience new things, and we have done a lot of fun stuff. Yesterday we learned Filipino kids games and had a bbq on the beach. It was sooo good. Two guys found some jellyfish (about the size of small pancake) in the water, and my roommate anna got stung by one. But she's fine, it's a small sting. I didn't go in the water. The sister of one of our trainers came with her 2 little girls. We played a lot, and the mom invited me to their house in Iloilo if I ever want to come. The girls speak fantastic English, they go to an international school in Iloilo. I'm sure sometime I will go to their house. Relationships are extremely important here, and it couldn't hurt to have a friend in the big city who has some resources. (this family is not poor.)

Today we went to market day with our LCFs. (Language/Culture Facilitators) They helped us find out what things were, what they cost, stuff like that.

We're working on language at least 2 hours everyday. I am learning Ilonggo. It's not too hard, but I always forget what I've learned almost right away.

Still hot, but when the sun isn't out, it's tolerable.