From France With Love

This summer has been a season of firsts for a Snellville family and their sixteen-year-old foreign exchange student.

It’s the first time the Adams family has hosted an exchange student, and it’s the first time Joy Anna Walch of Strasbourg, France has lived with an American family.

Dad Doug Adams and Joy Anna’s father work for the same company, a multinational wholesale food company, and arranged the informal month-long exchange program with the blessings of their families. The Adams family has two children: Alex, who is a rising tenth grader at Brookwood High and Connor, who is a student at a college in downtown Atlanta.

“I hoped it would be a good opportunity for my children to understand a different point of view, a different culture,” said Sue Adams, Doug's wife and an educator. “Being that she’s their age, the experience has been very interesting to them."

 Fifteen years old and only ten months younger, Alex Adams finds Joy “more like me than different. It’s more like she’s from here. She just has an accent."

Joy finds the “buildings, accents and even the mentalities different.” She noted that she was “quite shocked” because the American drinking glass “is huge. . . Everything is bigger in America than France."

“Americans don’t think the same as French people,” Joy added, recalling that when the Adams visited Connor's college, “I went to take Alex’s arm, which is common in France, and Alex didn’t like it.”

She also noted that some people have been surprised when she greeted them with a kiss on both cheeks. “People hug here,” she said smiling.

Joy also explained that French students must take two languages, though students in the United States are usually required to take one language. Still, she prefers the American system of education, which she believes has less pressure than the French system.

 “After you graduate at 18, if you fail the exam, you can’t enter the university,” she said, noting that your career path – science, literature or economics - must be chosen during the junior year of high school. “To become a doctor, you must be on the science track,” she explained.

Sue Adams has worked hard to provide experiences for Joy during her stay in Georgia with visits to the High Museum of Art, Georgia State University, the Georgia Aquarium and the University of Georgia.

However, “she really wants interpersonal relationships. She enjoys being around kids and doing what they’re doing,” Sue Adams said.

“She hungers for a better understanding of the English language,” Adams added. “She wants a deeper vocabulary and her dialect to be more English and less French.”

She added that Joy “knows more grammar than I do.”

Snellville is known for its neighborhoods, and Joy finds our homes very different from the homes in her country.

“In France, we have streets, not neighborhoods. We don’t have big yards. People don’t know each other,” she said. “Everyone is very friendly here."

Joy is on the economic track in high school and plans to become an international lawyer, who works for the rights of women and children.

“We are very lucky that Joy is responsible and respectful,” Sue Adams said. “An exchange student is not for everyone. The dynamics of the family come into play."

Joy's visit comes to a close soon, as her last day in the U.S. is July 13. Will the Adams family visit France one day?

“Probably, she’s invited us,” Alex said, adding that the invitation has been extended to her entire family.