Maui

My husband Jim and I went to Hawaii for our honeymoon, and a lot of our travel involved driving around Maui to get to skate parks and secluded beaches and nature walks. After our first week, we became accustomed to seeing signs along the roads and in neighborhoods that were written in Hawaiian, and we would try to pronounce them and wonder out loud what they meant. One such word we kept seeing repeatedly, and we took turns guessing how we thought a native might say it, the curiosity of why it was so common a word baffling us. Then, finally, it occurred to us why this Hawaiian word was written in so many places – it was a way for the residents to give directions to their local courier.

The word was “mailman.”