Well, That All Depends on What Your Definition of ____ is.

BBQ Night – the POC meal every Friday evening, consisting of grilled hamburgers, sausages, and onions, accompanied by fried eggs, beets, and various salads

Bake-n-Fry – a heavy, rectangular metal pan, with lid and detachable handle, that can be used for baking in an oven or frying stuff on a stove, or doing either on a grate over an open fire

Birthday – a highly-anticipated day signified in the morning by a decorated dining room and in the evening with cake and ice cream in honor of the celebrant; the only days on which dessert is served

Bush Knife – a large knife used for cutting vines and trees or wood; also known as a machete

Dialogue – one of six written Tok Pisin conversations that students must memorize and say periodically during language class; helps to learn sentence constructs and practical questions and answers

Digicel – the PNG cellular phone service (one of two) that has the greatest area of coverage

Drum Oven – a container made out of a 5-gallon drum with a sheet metal cover; can be placed on a fire grate and used for baking over an open fire

Dyna – the open air truck that POC owns and uses to transport students; similar to some commercial PMVs

Expat – short for Expatriate; referring to someone with a foreign (from outside of PNG) passport

Fellowship Night – one night per week when small groups of students meet in the home of a staff member for fellowship, fun, and often food

Fruit bowl – a container consisting of pineapple, papaya, and banana pieces that shows up on the table three meals per day

Generator – a frequently-used machine that provides power when the PNG power fails

Hamburger – that thing Americans sometimes top with bacon and tomato, but that Aussies apparently prefer to eat topped with fried egg and beets

Haus Kuk – an outdoor kitchen made from narrow tree trunks, sticks, and bamboo; large poles are driven into the ground by hand; all materials are held together only with twine

Haus Kuk Weekend – five weekends during the course when students are expected to provide all of their own meals utilizing only their Haus Kuks, the supplies in their rat boxes, a fire grate, the drum oven, and whatever food supplies they bought in town

Hike – a two-plus hour event involving walking up and down and up and down through villages, over creeks, along steep drop-offs, and deep in the jungle; occasionally greatly complicated by recent rains that make the trail slick and treacherous

Hike, Kamba – a hike that lasts a full day, to Kamba and back to Pat

Hike, Three Day – a hike that lasts three days; the three-day hike for this class will include work to help finish a missionary’s village house

Jais Aben – a resort near the town of Madang where students are taken each Sunday afternoon to swim, snorkel, and/or enjoy a leisurely afternoon by the water (in PNG it is acceptable to utilize some resort facilities even if you are not a guest, but it is a good idea to patronize the establishment in some way in exchange for taking up space; for example, one might purchase a pot of coffee or an ice cream cone)

Kina – PNG’s unit of currency, equal to approximately 45 US cents

Liklik Haus – an enclosed outdoor toilet; usually a pit toilet

Martha – our hot water heater, similar in design to a drum oven; a fire is lit twice a day inside a “stove” to warm the water

Mausrot – (pronounced “mouse road” and literally meaning “the mouth of the road”) – where the winding, dirt, pothole-laden road down from Nobnob intersects the main, paved, pothole-laden road

MTV – the one PNG TV station, which students do not watch because we have no TV; rumor is that it has nothing to do with Rock and Roll music videos

Nagada – the lagoon where students do weekly swimming for exercise; a 100 meter rope is set up and students are expected to swim laps around the rope, one direction tends to be with the current and the other direction against

Nobnob - the hill on which POC sits, named for the language group that inhabits most of the area

Pat – the common name of the actual property on which POC sits

PMV – a vehicle used for transporting large numbers of people; typically owned by the driver and used as a business; a trip from the mausrot to town costs K1.50; a trip from Madang to Ukarumpa (in an enclosed PMV more akin to a 15-passenger van) costs about K35

Rat Box – a wooden box designed to keep out rats; each family is issued two rat boxes full of supplies, such as pots and dishes, to use during Haus Kuk weekends and Village Living

Rempi – a village along the coast north of Madang where the directors of POC have a small lagoon-front house; the cove boasts clear water and an amazing reef teeming with fish; one restful day during POC when students experience all play and no work

Shower – a cold stream of water that comes from the wall inside one of POC’s shower stalls

Shower, Bucket – a generally warmer alternative to a shower in which one runs warm water from Martha into a bucket and uses it to fill a second bucket suspended in the shower stall; the shower bucket has a valve on the bottom that opens and closes to control water flow

Tea – break time that occurs mid-morning and forces otherwise task-oriented students to socialize with the national employees of POC and practice Tok Pisin while building relationships; as a PNG custom, tea also occurs for nationals in the mid-afternoon

Tok Pisin – the trade language of PNG; literally translated, it means “Bird Talk”

Top-Up Card – a prepaid calling card for a Digicel phone; also called a “Flex Kad”

Wasfemili – a local Nobnob family assigned to a POC family (or pair of singles); the Tok Pisin word meaning “watch family”

Wasmama – the Mother figure of one’s Wasfemili

Waspapa - the Father figure of one’s Wasfemili

Wilma – the stove in the POC kitchen; a fire must be made inside it each morning and stoked periodically throughout the day

Village Allocation – the act of assigning someone to a village for the Village Living phase of POC or for permanent language work; the village to which one is assigned

Village Living – the phase of POC when families are assigned a village to live among for five weeks with little other western contact; a house and liklik haus are provided by the community for the POC family for the duration of village living

Village Overnight – a one-night stay with the students’ Wasfemili during week 5 of POC, in preparation for Village Living