This report describes the moral phenomena that students in an intensive Arabic study abroad program encountered as they tried to find speaking opportunities for themselves outside of institutional arrangements. The ways that participants went about speaking activities were accompanied by tensions that they had to deal with throughout the program. They found themselves obliged to consider values such as decisiveness, independence, and fairness as they tried to become better conversationalists, cultural insiders, and friends with the people they met. Additional research using the same analytic framework could reveal deeply practical insights for the benefit of language learners and practitioners.