Letter from the Editors

Dear Reader!

On behalf of the Editorial Board, we would like to congratulate you on the New Year, a year of new accomplishments and success stories. We hope that it has started for you successfully and luck accompanies you in all your endeavors. We would like to thank all the active alumni for the work they did during the last year, and we hope that during the year of 2005, there will be more of alumni joining the community. Thus we want to WELCOME ALL ALUMNI of 2005 in Turkmenistan, and wish them to be successful, outstanding, active, and energetic.

This winter issue is devoted to cultures and cultural diversity. You’ll find alumni’s stories about cultural values, differences and the impact new cultures have made in their life. Also, we feature the interview with U.S. guest speaker Peter Lu who has visited Turkmenistan recently. You may find interesting information on cultural programs at the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat as well as find out about UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, the first legal instrument which raises cultural diversity to the rank of “common heritage of humanity”.

The coming spring issue we would like to dedicate to the International Year of Sports and Physical Education, 2005. We encourage all alumni to talk about their experiences that they have ever had related to sports. Most of us have joined some sport clubs and teams in the United States or developed their interest towards particular sports. Thus, we would like you to tell us and compare the American and Turkmen sports development. This is going to be a great chance for you to tell us about your views, life stories, and share ideas. We highly encourage you to submit your articles by July 30, 2005 to bibican2003@iatp.edu.tm.

Editorial Board:
Bibi Meredova, Gulnar Chashemova, Gulyalek Soltanova