“There’s not one day that I don’t have thoughts of my exchange year in Thailand. I miss my second home,” she said. A few days before classes ended at SHS in June, Emma and her sister, SHS graduate Molly Kauffman, gave students at taste of Thailand – literally.

Emma Kauffman, who spent last academic year in Thailand as a Rotary International exchange student, shows Salem High School culinary arts students in Bev Allman's class how to carve flowers out of carrots as garnish for a Thai meal. Photo by Meg Hibbert

With suggestions and serving help from her younger sister, Molly Kauffman cooked Thai specialties for students in Bev Allman’s culinary arts classes.

While at SHS Molly excelled in culinary arts to the advanced level, and now works in a restaurant while attending college.

Emma Kauffman, right, and her older sister, Molly Kauffman, cook Thai food for SHS culinary arts students. Photo by Meg Hibbert

While staying with host families in Bangkok, Emma learned to enjoy the foods her Thai host host brothers and sisters did.

Those she and Molly prepared for Salem students included pad Thai noodles with peanuts, fresh vegetable garnishes and simple desserts. Her host family was Chinese, so she got to experience many Chinese dishes that she loved.

“Thai food is very spicy, known as pet. One of my favorite Thai dishes is pai Thai and gopow moo,” she explained. “Moo is pork in Thai and gopow is a type of leaf.”

The Catholic school she attended in Bangkok was so different, she explained, “and very strict.”

While there, she wrote back to friends in Salem, “I am the only one with blond hair in a school of 5,000 students. I stick out like a sore thumb.”

Emma shows completed carrot roses for garnish. Photo by Meg Hibbert

Even though she is only 16 – she celebrated her 16th birthday in Thailand with members of one of the Rotary Clubs she visited – Emma already has more international experiences than most of her friends.

This summer she made her third trip to Guatemala, with the support of her church on a missions trip.

“It was awesome,” she said, with her typical enthusiasm.

Her best friend is Franziska from Germany. The two visit by skype Internet connections every Sunday. Emma said Franziska is planning on coming to the United States during spring break.

Because the subjects she studied while in Thailand were different than what is required in Virginia, Emma caught up by doing an online summer school English class. She managed to pack in a trip to the beach with an uncle and aunt and cousins.

She also traveled to New York to see her brother and father who live there. Emma is the daughter of Doris Bennett of Salem.

The pair turned out to be Matthew McDaniel on his horse Hampton, a long-legged half-quarter-horse, half-Percheron.

Matthew McDaniel on Hampton rides through the snow Feb. 2 in Salem on his way from Salem, Ore., to the United Nations in New York City to promote rights of Thailand's Akha people.

They were on Day 333, making their way from Salem, Ore., eventually to the United Nations to draw attention to the plight of the Akha hill people in Thailand. The goal of the ride across America is to create pressure on the Queen of Thailand to return thousands of acres of the people’s rice lands, McDaniel said.

On Tuesday, the pair planned to ride through Salem and go 15 miles to the other side of Roanoke before meeting up with the rest of the family who were parked in the lot of the Salem Walmart in a 40-foot-bus emblazoned with the sign “Ride for Freedom.” Smaller signs shouted “Freedom from Disease,” “Freedom from Child Trafficking,” and “Freedom from Land Grabs.”

Inside the bus were McDaniel’s wife, Michu, an Akha native from Thailand, and their five children who range from Ah Soh, who is 9, to baby Ah Pymm, 2-1/2. Michu teaches the children English and the Akha language.

Occasionally they take breaks from the road, such as the one they plan to do in Washington, D.C., so the kids can see the national landmarks. He and his horse also plan to protest the treatment of the Akha in front of the Thailand embassy.

The family also asks for contributions for their cause and to help them on their way. ”Hampton eats about 12 pounds of sweet feed a day,” McDaniel said, while stopping for a photograph in front of Marizel’s Flowers in Salem.

McDaniel and Hampton, his half-Percheron, half-quarter horse, amble down Main Street in Salem, Va., on their way to the United Nations in New York City. Photo by Meg Hibbert

“We put up anywhere we can park the bus and tie up Hampton,” he continued. Photos on McDaniel’s YouTube site show the bus and horse in the parking lot of the BP in Shawsville before heading on the next day to Salem. Hampton is tied nearby, warm in his blanket, McDaniel said, despite snow and ice crystals frosting the horse’s back and mane.

“He doesn’t mind snow,” McDaniel said, “but doesn’t like rain.”

According to McDaniel’s Facebook site, he has been working for Akha human rights since 1991, the same year he met members of the group while visiting Thailand. The Akha are about 600,000 people who own mountain rice farms in the higher elevations of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, China and Vietnam, McDaniel said.

Under occupation, he lists “activist.” His hobbies include horsemanship. Why a horse ride across America?

“Nobody in America knows who the Akha are, but they know horses,” McDaniel is quoted as saying in an article in the “Bristol Herald Courier” from Bristol, Va.

After Salem and Roanoke, McDaniel’s route was Lynchburg to Charlottesville to Washington, D.C., then through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and into New York.

To learn more and to follow McDaniel and Hampton, check out akha.org.