relationship virgin seeks advice on long-distance contact

Hi,

This is kind of a long story, but I'll cut it short to begin with. I went on one date with this girl last winter, and nothing came of it, but we did stay in touch. Recently, we've been exchanging messages on facebook.com, and her responses have become increasingly quick, elaborate and frequent, and possibly a bit flirtatious. Yesterday she left 7 brief messages on my 'wall', all at once. This, and the fact that she ends most messages with a couple of x's, has led me to believe that she might still be interested, but I'm not entirely sure. How can I know? And if she is... what should I do?

I'm 21 (as is she) and have never been in a relationship before, for various reasons, so I'm very inexperienced and I don't quite know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know for sure, but I get the impression that she might be as inexperienced as I am. She's a shy sort. So I don't really know how to go about this. I was thinking of saying something along the lines of, "I still really like you, can we meet up?" But I don't know if that's a good idea.

One problem is that we no longer live in the same city. We met when we were both students at the same university, but she's now moved back to her hometown and is working there, while I've stayed on to do a postgraduate course. So it's not a simple matter of going to the pub for a drink... if I want to see her again, one of us will have to commute (3 hours by train).

Another problem is that after our first date (which didn't go brilliantly... we were both a bit too shy and there were a few awkward pauses), I had no luck in persuading her to go on another one. Now this might have been because she'd lost interest, but I'm not sure that it was. Her reasons for not going out with me again were always to do with work; she always had an exam or an essay deadline coming up, and no time to see me. Maybe she was making excuses because she didn't want to see me, but her friend tells me that she is a bit of a swot, so it's plausible that she actually did just want to devote herself to studying. There's reason to believe that she still liked me, because she would send me text messages out of the blue, and she was always receptive when I texted her. And now, of course, the facebook thing is happening.

Anyway, she's funny, smart and beautiful, and these oppurtunities (if this is an oppurtunity) very rarely happen for me, so I don't want to waste this. What should I do? Help...

Ben