Students at Kennedy may know Joyline Goeb as a student who has an obsession with peanut butter M & M’s or that how involved she is in Kennedy theatre technical crew — but not many may know what brings her to Cedar Rapids from Germany.

After growing up in Germany, Goeb decided to move to Cedar Rapids, Iowa and participate as an exchange student for the 2016-2017 school year. Goeb will stay with her host family until June 2017.

“The host family I’m with is very, very nice. It’s actually the family of a student here who is a junior too,” Goeb said.

Goeb is very excited to see what the rest of the school year in Iowa has in store for her. At Kennedy, she participates in theater and she hopes to make it into Happiness show choir tech crew, because she has many friends already involved and busy with that extracurricular activity. 

With 86 days checked off so far, Goeb says that she sometimes misses her home and family, especially her mom. She has three siblings, a brother who’s 21, a sister in 10th grade, and another brother in 9th grade.

Her favorite thing about America is the people, who she describes as “so friendly and heartfelt.” But once Goeb returns to Germany, she anticipates one thing that she’ll really miss most from America is the food.

“Everything is so much bigger in America. My favorite thing is peanut butter M & M’s, but just generally peanut butter. There are so many options it’s crazy,” Goeb said.