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On Feb. 24, I was reminded how good it felt to speak Spanish every day. Eight days later, I was reminded how good it felt to do photojournalism every day.

I started what will likely be a six-week stint at the Journal & Courier in Lafayette on March 4, filling in for an editor on medical leave. My life hasn't been so full of journalism since the IDS, and I love it. There are a lot of stories to tell (like getting on the AP wire and breaking my camera on the same day), but I absolutely have to tell you one of them.

My first assignment was to cover a gold and electronics buy-back event at the Comfort Inn. It was very low-key, but one promoter was insistent that I get photos of every type of item bought at the event. This man, known around the place as Jeff the Coin Guy, showed me some of the gold they had received earlier in the day (photo 9). After the photo, he hurried off to do a live radio spot, so I asked another organizer what his full name was. (You know, for the caption.) The organizer said, without trouble, that his name was Jeff Parsons.

I came back to the newsroom and submitted the photos. The next day, the reporter on the story, Hayleigh Colombo, came over to the photo desk and asked me about the photos I'd taken. Specifically, she was confused about Jeff the Coin Guy. She had been told that his last name was Allen, which didn't jive with my Parsons. She checked it out, and she found Illinois documents showing that a Jeffrey A. Parsons owed $500 million to various creditors. Five hundred million dollars! And the photos of Jeff the Coin Guy attached to Illinois media stories matched our guy.

So, I would like to take some appropriate credit for this story copy of story here. I don't know what would have happened if I had asked Jeff himself what his name was.

Anyway, this was an exciting two weeks. As a token of my excitement, I have here a batch of photos from those first two weeks (March 4 to March 17). Going forward, I'll probably put up an entry every Sunday night while I'm here, starting with photos from my third week this Sunday.

While you're here, I should tell you that I have a series on Operation Walk in Guatemala running on the Indianapolis Monthly's Circle Citizen blog. So far, I have three entries there, with the fourth going up some time today.

Lafayette Boxing Club's Tate Sturgeon watches as Kate Mane and Kyle Siple trade light jabs during a workout Tuesday, March 5, 2013, at the club building in Lafayette. Sturgeon and Mane, along with Luis Pena, Conan Hutchison and other boxers, will compete at the Indiana Golden Gloves tournament on March 23 in Indianapolis.

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Yesterday, I started a month-long stint as a photographer for the Lafayette Journal & Courier. I'm filling in while one of the photographers is on leave, and I found an empty room in a house of graduate students to stay in, meaning I'll be under long-term exposure to "the enemy" (of course, Purdue has never been my enemy).

Before that gets going, though, I want to put up something from Guatemala. Last week, I translated Spanish and English for the Mooresville branch of Operation Walk, an organization that goes to developing countries and does orthopedic surgery for those who need it but can't afford it. The humanitarian trip alternates every year between Guatemala and Nicaragua, and this year we were stationed at Hospittalia Amatitlán, a hospital about an hour south of Guatemala City. Simply put, this is the best thing I've done and been a part of in a long time. To say that I was part of a trip that resolved 99 joint cases in 69 patients in four days is nothing short of an honor. The head of the trip (who is also my research-job boss) invited everyone back next year, and I can't wait to do it again.

I didn't have a lot of free time, but when I did I took some photos. Many of them I took on my iPhone because I was too busy to run around with my big DSLR as I gave patients instructions on physical therapy and their medications. Regardless, I hope this gives you a taste of all the good things we did in Guatemala. If you'd like, you can go to the trip website and go through the photos of the extremely talented Jim Brown, former journalism professor and associate dean at IUPUI.

MP4, WebM, or Ogg.
A 3.5-hour time lapse of Operation Walk volunteers outside the operation rooms at Hospittalia in Amatitlán, Guatemala.

I got one more assignment for the Star before I head off to Guatemala early tomorrow morning. It was a black-tie silent auction to benefit Dance Kaleidoscope, a local dance company with some pretty nice costumes, designed this year by Cheryl Sparks. You can check out the full photo gallery on the Star website (when it goes up), but a few of the more candid pictures appear below.

¡Hasta luego!

Jack Hu gets help in tying his black tie from Chris Douglas during Dance Kaleidoscope's "La Vie en Rose" fundraising gala at the downtown Marriott, Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013. The event featured a banquet and, in emcee Eric Halvorson's words, a "super silent auction" of donated items that was run through text message. (Alex Farris / For The Star)