It seems like I should back up and explain the first time I recall The Rabbit Hole finding me. At the time, I did not know this was going to be a recurring port of call.
When I was 23 years old, I had just graduated from college and made my first trip outside the country... a little island country in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka. It was an adventure that I made with my husband of one year. We went to his homeland and lived there for several months before returning to the US. It was an adventure for which no one could have prepared me, but the memories will last forever.
Travelling overseas was completely new to me. I think I learned more about world geography during my flights than I ever did in school. During the middle leg of my journey to Sri Lanka, we landed in Dubai. We got off the plane and took our numerous bags to a quiet spot in the airport, while we waited for our next plane to take us to the "Jewel of the Indian Ocean."
My new husband and I were hungry, so we decided to get money changed at Thomas Cooke. He took our dollars to the counter and left me with the bags. I must have looked extremely out of place in that airport. A young white woman with waist length red hair, a red pencil skirt, a face full of makeup, painted nails, sitting alone with a generous amount of luggage. When a group of men came over and started talking to me in a language I did not understand, I simply smiled. When one of them reached over and touched my hair and put a sizable amount of foreign currency on my suitcase, I felt uneasy. I yelled for my husband to come over and make this group of "admirers" go away. He did, and in doing so, found out that these men thought I was a prostitute. The great white slut from America. What the hell? What had I gotten myself into? How far away was home? Could I get an emergency flight back to the US?
It was the only the beginning of my Rabbit Hole adventures, from half a world away.
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