Question about pretty URLs

[busboy]

This URL works perfectly in that the URL does not change in the address bar:

http://www.oil-testimonials.com/essential-oils/7484/

Recently I have been working on a facelift for my website, so I put all the needed files into a directory called newVersion. Now when I go to this URL:

http://www.oil-testimonials.com/newVersion/essential-oils/7484

Somehow the URL is no longer pretty and reverts back to the ugly format:

http://www.oil-testimonials.com/newVersion/essential-oils.php?tID=7484

Here are the relevant lines in my .htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^essential-oils/([0-9]+)$ http://www.oil-testimonials.com/newVersion/essential-oils.php?tID=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^essential-oils/([0-9]+)/$ http://www.oil-testimonials.com/newVersion/essential-oils.php?tID=$1 [L]
RewriteRule ^essential-oils/([0-9]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9\+]+)$ http://www.oil-testimonials.com/newVersion/essential-oils.php?tID=$1&q=$2 [L]

Does anyone know whey I have to use the full path otherwise the RewriteRule does not work? Does it have anything to do with the fact that I'm running this .htaccess file from within a subdirectory instead of from the root?

Thanks!