What to do about being shy...

Haha, it's easy to just say "go and talk to people" but it's definitely hard to implement when you're actually the person who's shy.

For my personal experience, I was more or less within your same experience, that in being shy and having to deal with it (and not with the part about cute French girls going after me =/ ). Actually the why I ended up dealing with it was that I was getting tired/frustrated with being shy and it reached its breaking point. But it might not be that desperate for you yet.

A little bit of me believes that you see a lot of girls as possible girlfriends, which makes it harder to talk to them. I know you're just looking for one, but since you're talking to them for a purpose, it might seem a little more imposing to talk to a girl since you're probably thinking, if you mess up, than that's it with any chances of her being your girlfriend.

If that's the case, then you have to try and remove that doubt in your head. Just trust in yourself. Sure, it's good to be a little nervous, but don't let it become so deabilitating that you don't even make the effort.

And in the times that I've wanted to talk to someone of special interest online, I find the best way to tackle it was to just jump right in and press enter. Since you've already established some sort of rapport with her, I don't see why talking online would be any different than offline.

But it's all about taking the first step. After that, I think it'll become easier.

Jam it back in, in the dark.