So many excuses, are you sure you’re into this girl? It’s not just a cover-up for secret homosexual feelings or something?
Damn christ man, get a move on and do something!
So why do you like her at all? Her Facebook albums?
Alright, for better or worse, I’ve gone ahead and sent a basic, “Hi, how are you” type message. No response as yet, but I’m just telling you so you don’t rant at me all night. 
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
^5!
FWIW, IE has crapped out on my TWICE tonight. Both times I had logged into Facebook and was catching up on some stuff when it seized up.
Did she write you back yet?
Okay…I’ve sent two messages—no response. I don’t know if she just doesn’t look at the Facebook chat bar or what, but it’s very weird. (And no, I didn’t send anything that would really creep her out. ;)) I obviously don’t want to send any more, since that would seem a bit desperate, and I’m not sure how exactly one would bring that up in a face-to-face conversation without sounding stalker-ish. What should I do? I guess I could use the actual Facebook messaging system instead (think email vs. IM), but the third message in a row? It would seem quite strange if I were on the receiving end.
Maybe the best thing to do would just be to wait, since I can’t think of any serious reason (as in, I’m not treated like a social outcast and am, in my opinion, fairly attractive, although not God’s gift to womankind) why she would be deliberately ignoring a basic, “Hi, how are you?” type message.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Keep the OCD in check.
Avoid coming off like this:
That’s my intention. 
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
At least to me so far so good Vox!
I totally agree with keeping it low for a while cuz any more messages would end up with the “stalker” vibe.
Still try to weasel your way into running in to her sometime…but obviously really subtly since now she knows you have messaged her
I think he actually gave himself the PERFECT opening here. All he has to do is go up to her next time her sees her and say “Oh, hey, I messaged you on Facebook a few days ago and you didn’t respond. Were you busy?”
My bet is the response he’ll get is something along the lines of “Oh, that was you? I didn’t know who you were so I ignored it as some spam or something!” Which will open a few doors as far as communication goes.
Props again for doing something rather than waiting for a miracle to occur. The first step is the hardest.
Like I said earlier, I’m a lot older than you and I didn’t grow up in your area. It could be that my opinion isn’t valid, but I’ll state it and let you decide what fits and what doesn’t. I’ll weigh in here (with one foot off the scale).
I think girls/women are looking for at least two things: courage and confidence. If this girl is an at bat, then messanging her via Facebook is a weak swing. You’re better off, IMO, striking out with a strong swing. After all, you won’t miss the ball every time and when you do connect, mmboy!
She may reply yet, but if she doesn’t, you’re not sure what it means. If she were my (imaginary) daughter, I’d be glad that she wasn’t too responsive to an electronic communication.
To illustrate, there was a girl I once dated. I was a freshman (no idle descriptor there) in high school. My friend drove me to her house, we honked, and she didn’t emerge. Honked again. Nothing. We went up and knocked and her mom answered, informing me that if I wanted to see her daughter, I could come to their door because she wasn’t going to come running when the horn honked.
I wasn’t trying to be rude, but I was inexperienced. I understood what she meant, even then. If a young man is legitimately interested in the daughter, he won’t mind meeting the parent. Old-fashioned? No, good sense. Lesson learned; I never did that again.
Over in the Facebook thread, IIRC, someone commented that he joined because his daughter wanted to join and his condition was that he be her “friend” so that he could keep an eye on her. Your communication with her may not be as private as you think.
With her being European, I suspect she’s more mature about these things than her American counterparts. E.g. as I understand it, there’s really no drinking age over there—they expect their kids to be more mature. If she’s 16, think of her as being 21.
I think you should stop with the Facebook and go to the next phase, which requires face-to-face.
Yeah, but it could also come off as creepy if done too soon or too fervently. Even if not though, if she didn’t see the messages, it seems kind of silly to say, “Oh, I sent you a message on Facebook the other day.” “What about?” “Just saying hi,” when you’re already saying hi by doing that. 
Note (to people who have accused me of this before in the thread) that I am not “shooting this down” unequivocally, just point out some minor objections. (In fact, as I type it, it sounds less ridiculous than it did in my head.)
Also, when I’m nervous talking person-to-person, I tend to have a hard time thinking on my feet—I get that “tip-of-the-tongue syndrome” a lot. Which of course only serves to make me less confident about speaking person-to-person, and I obviously just have to get over it, but still.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
I want to respond to this post because it leads in to my last piece of advice for you with respect to this girl.
You are completely correct with this statement. You can’t just walk up to a girl and say “hey, you’re cute! Do you want to go out Saturday night?” Sometimes the boldness works (if you’re Brad Pitt) but usually the person doing the asking will be seen as a socially awkward creep. If you want to ask somebody out there is a bit of a social dance that must be performed first.
Step 1: Small talk. When a girl stands with an open posture, makes eye contact, and smiles at you she is letting you know she is open to small talk. You don’t need to fret about starting the conversation, just pick out something around you and comment on it. As an example, when I was at Starbucks this morning I saw a cute woman drinking coffee through a straw. Making small talk with her about why she would drink coffee that way was a nice distraction while I was waiting for my coffee.
Step 2: Basic Conversation. Small talk shouldn’t last long and if you are going to keep talking one of you will bring up a subject with a little more substance. You can tell when you are in this step if you are talking easily, but guarding personal information. If you want to move conversation forward you can offer your opinion on something you are talking about. If she offers her opinion as well then you can move to step 3. If not, just keep the conversation neutral.
Step 3: Personal Conversation. Similar to step 2 but filled with more personal details. You both begin to share opinions, likes, and dislikes. You will tell personal stories and anecdotes and the conversation will take on a natural flow as the two of you become comfortable with one another. If she has an SO she will usually mention him now to subtly let you know that she doesn’t want to move to step 4. If you only make it to this step you can probably swing a friendship out of it. Even if she’s not available, she has friends that might be.
Step 4: Flirting. Up to this point everything is fairly simple and friendly. Once you begin to flirt then things get complicated. The trick in this step is to suggest interest without flat out saying it. There are a lot of subtle clues to look for that I don’t want to go into at this point but there are countless threads out there dealing with this subject! Like most guys, I can be a bit dense so if you are a girl and flirting with me, you’d better make your clues noticable! I find this step to be a lot easier when both parties have had a couple of drinks
If you flirt with her, and she flirts back then you are free to ask her for her phone number and ask her out on a date. But if she shuts you down during any of the previous steps then the best thing to do is just bow out and move on to the next girl because this one is clearly not interested. If you persist, then you are creepy.
So my best advice to you is to say congratulations for contacting her! The more you start conversations, the easier it becomes to do so. If this one doesn’t respond to you then nothing you say or do will change her mind. Just keep your eyes open for the next girl out there who has an open posture, makes eye contact with you, and smiles - then walk over to her and chat.
Learn by doing. Go talk to her, be awkward. Next time, it’ll be a little less. A little less after that. And so it goes.
You can practice elsewhere. Try making conversation with random people. Be friendly, funny, casual. Practice. The more time you spend not practicing, the more time you waste sucking at it. Go practice.
You’re sure you didn’t mention Poland?
You may have to talk to her in person now.
Nah, all I did was promise her the Sudetenland for Valentine’s Day. It didn’t seem like too big of a present. 
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
So Vox, while your epic tale is on hold mind if I ask something here really fast? Don’t want to start ANOTHER thread and this one has some good advice, I promise I won’t completely hijack your thread, everyone, focus on Vox when he has something to say!
There’s a girl in my Japanese class that I want to ask out, I’m having a little bit of trouble with the approach. I’ve talked to her a few times and we certainly have a bit in common, and she seems friendly, not just humoring me in conversations. I do have a couple roadblocks though, I don’t know her first name (because we refer to each other as <Last name>-san in class, I only know one person’s first name). I’m “kinda sorta” in the same group of friends as her. Meaning I talk to them and leave class with them but haven’t had an excuse to actually do anything with them yet (most of us met in that class). I also don’t know if she has a current SO. Anyway, that’s just background to help bring everyone up to speed.
My issues with the approach are basically my window for talking to her. I can talk to her before class, but talking at length is difficult, and I imagine getting her (or anyone) into the window of a private conversation would be pretty tough. I could wait outside the door for her around when she usually arrives (I’m usually present a good 20 minutes before her), but that might come off as odd. If I take this approach I was thinking of doing it tomorrow.
My other option is every Tuesday I don’t have class immediately after and she has a 30 minute wait until her next class. Last Tuesday we walked together, we’re the only ones that go that direction that day AND I can just hang out with her until her class starts. This gives me a good conversation window to figure out things like availability and her first name (I do imagine it would be kinda tacky to ask “Would you go out with me? Oh, by the way, what’s your first name?”) and then I can ask before I leave.
I’m thinking the second one would be best, but I thought I’d ask everyone’s opinion. The first one has a couple advantages in that it’s short and sweet and I have less time to cop-out, and that if she says no Valentines Day is Saturday and I can just pass it off as “oh, okay, Valentines Day was coming up and I just wanted to see if you were interested” and drop it. The second one is nice because I can steamroll all the bugs out and the private conversation will evolve naturally, I don’t have to pull her away from anything to do it, but it may come off as weird if I spend 30 minutes with her and ask her out, if she says no she may just think I was just being nice to get a date, which is absolutely not true*, either way she’s really cool from my sporadic conversations with her and I want to be her friend if she’s not interested, which I know is no guarantee of either way but I don’t want to give the “buttering her up for a single purpose” impression.
*Well, okay, before anyone calls me out on this, yes the general purpose of the conversation is to ask her out, but I’m also interested in just hanging out with her, it’s not the SOLE purpose and don’t want to send the wrong signals if she’s not interested.
I know how you feel, except without the walking together with 30 minutes of free time. 
I say you should definitely pick Door #2.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
This one shouldn’t be too complicated. You know the girl somewhat already and she seems to enjoy your company.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that there is one “right” way to approach her. (Vox seems to be falling into that trap as well.) You can ask someone out any number of ways, and it doesn’t really matter whether you talk to her before or after class. You could even do BOTH!
Don’t worry about asking for her first name, you have a good excuse and she may not know your first name either. This is a decent conversational opening, in fact. The next time you see her, greet her with a friendly “Hi Lastname-san! It’s funny, I realized I always call you Lastname-san, I don’t even know what your first name is. What do people call you outside Japanese class?”
She’ll tell you her name, you can tell her yours, and make whatever smalltalk you like. If you’re feeling good, go ahead and ask her if she wants to go get coffee or whatever with you this weekend. Otherwise wait until you have more time on Tuesday, but don’t put it off indefinitely. Don’t worry about having the perfect line. I think “Hey Firstname, now that we’re on a first name basis, do you wanna go [whatever] with me [whenever]?” would be good, but say whatever you want. The point is to say SOMETHING. I do recommend having a specific place/time in mind, though. If she’s interested in YOU then you can always arrange to go somewhere else or pick another time if your first suggestion won’t work for her.
Okay, I won’t be at school tomorrow, and Monday is President’s Day, a school holiday (well, actually, a teacher workday), so a face-to-face meeting isn’t going to happen until Tuesday at the very earliest. And she shows no signs of having received the chat messages. However, I just thought of something: Facebook is now showing an option to give a “Valentine’s Day gift” on everyone’s profile page, that consists of (I think) some choice of “gift” and a written note, and I don’t think they’re supposed to be limited to the romantic. What do you think about a friendly note?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris