Am I reading too much?

In India, generally after eating, the utensils go to the sink and we clean it up at the end of the day, or the maid comes and does it at the end of the day.

I have moved the UK recently, I live in a flatshare where the utensils are shared. I have been leaving tea cups in the sink and loading it later into the dish washer at my convinience. I also noticed other dirty utensils near or on the sink and have been loading them too.

One morning, every utensil was on the sink and while I started loading it my land lady told me " have you been loading everybodies ", she said "the others have to learn to clean after themselves, you only load yours".

- - I felt wierd about it and started thinking and realized may be she was
indirectly trying to tell me, I am not cleaning after finishing. From then
on I am ensuring that I leave nothing on the sink.

- - Today there is a bottle of wine on the kitchen and two cups on the
wine glass, is that how english people generally say they are offering
wine? I also was surprised to find a bottle of cough syrup on my
fridge tray.

I may be reading too much from it, I thought, the land lady had bought wine for the other two tenants for making up for the problems due to sink not being empty and had kept cough syrup on my firdge tray to tell me thats not for me. -> I am having a cultural adjustment issue. I may be reading everything wrong , or may be some of it wrong.

Should I appologize in person for having left tea cups on the sink on not doing immidiately or is it better to leave a note of appology. I get a feeling, I may be terribly mistaken, which may be my anxiety/ paranoia or may be reality. What is it really?

Above all am I reading too much.

She was just telling you that you should only wash your own dishes not everyones .I hardly think she would buy a bottle of wine for every body and not include you .You havnt done anything wrong .People do keep medicine in the fridge sometimes .The fridge is usually shared and you normally have your own shelf ,or you have to put your name on stuff .Students will drink wine from anything including cups .The average person drinks from a wine glass .Dont worry ,you will soon get used to things here .Take care Sue x

I went and told her, " I am sorry, I was leaving tea cups on the sink ". She was completely surprised. On seeing the surprise, I told her " I am culturally adjusting here, so wanted to be sure I am not doing anything wrong ".

She told me, " she only said do only yours not everybody elses "...

Amazing how worried I am getting. Then coming back to my room, I started thinking from now on she would be reluctant telling me anything, thinking I might worry!!!. Worry about worry about worry. How can I become a confident person, why am I worrying so much. worrying comes naturally to me. For not worrying, I am having to put a lot of effort.

it will be fine, you were honest and said you are new to all this and adjusting to things. you cleared up any mis understanding,
You are just reading too much into situations and what people say, you know you are doing it, and as you say it's hard work and a lot of effort to stop doing that, but you can do it. i know how hard it is , i am like this myself, but you have to go with your instinct, and if you think you are ready too much into it , you probably are..

Good luck

P x

Quote:

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Originally Posted by suzy-sue

The average person drinks from a wine glass .

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Since becoming a student I've drunk wine mainly out of an old toothbrush mug. :D

Heavymind - it must be really difficult adjusting to a new culture, I'd be terrified if I were in your shoes! You seem like you're coping fairly well, just ask people if you're not sure about something, they won't mind :). It can be really difficult to stop over analysing and reading too much into everything, but as someone else already said, if you think you're reading too much into it then you probably are.

Flatshares can be a nightmare when it comes to fridges, I reccomend just writing your name on everything that's yours without obviously naming each individual grape or anything! (I lived with a girl once who named each individual bannana and the rest of us thought that was hilarious. We were tempted to write her name on all of her grapes but thought she probably wouldn't see the funny side)

It's tough to stop overthinking everything, but if you realise you're doing it that's a step towards stopping.

Good luck and take care :)