¡Silencio!

Spanish students talk. They talk and talk and talk and talk, all throughout class, and they don't really mean to be rude, it's just how they operate, but it's incredibly annoying and I'm not good at making them shut up and sometimes I want to strangle them. I'm not a disciplinarian -- this job is supposed to be hard because it's in the wrong language, not because I suck at babysitting. But I actually thought they were getting a little better; I had basically resigned myself to talking loudly over a dull roar and shushing them when the roar got louder, and I was almost ok with that.

But then today someone came to my office hours to ask if I could please do more to make people shut up because it's really hard to hear. She was super nice and kept apologizing and saying things like "I guess you just got here" and "It's probably different in the United States" and it was actually sort of cute. Except that now I have to make them shut up and I don't know how to make them shut up. The room is so full of people that it's hard to know who exactly is being the loudest, and even if I did know I don't want to have to call people out or kick them out. I don't exactly even know how to kick someone out of class in Spanish. How the hell am I supposed to be a mean scary badass in a language I don't even speak properly?