John Swinney

Yesterday my Society and Politics class had another guest speaker, John Swinney. Currently he's the Finance Minister for Scotland, but he used to be the head of the Scottish National Party (the party that's currently in power) and a Member of Parliament. He's a great speaker, and it was really cool getting to see someone so important. Only like 20 students of 60 or so in the class showed up, but there were tons of faculty and government people there too. Swinney just had his climate change bill passed through parliament on Wednesday and he's the guy responsible for the budget so he had a lot to talk about.

Two days ago and most of yesterday were spent doing work (pretty much for the first time this semester) because I have a couple papers due soon, or when people are visiting, so I'm trying to get them done.

Last night I went to Chocolate Soup with some friends. It's basically just a cafe with a lot of chocolate drinks and coffees and stuff, so that was fun. After that we watched 30 Rock for a bit then went out to a club.

Today I was supposed to go pony trekking with the equestrian team but that was canceled due to weather, so I slept in a little, caught up on TV shows online and basically did nothing all day. It's been a slow week.... I'm definitely going pony trekking tomorrow with some friends though.

Observations:

- No matter where you walk in the city, there are always people trying to hand you pamphlets or talk to you. If I took every one I passed, I would have at least 10 pamphlets (half for the same thing) just on my way to class. It's insane.

- It's not true what people say about the drinking age in America. People always say that if we just lowered the drinking age to 18 then kids would eventually calm down and not be as crazy about alcohol because it's not taboo. As evidence, people site Europe. That's just not true. Kids here are just as crazy if not more so about alcohol than kids in the US. They party way more and drink way more than most people in the US, and no, they don't handle their alcohol better.