I want to move forward... Please help

Hi. I'm a foreign master student in one university in Belgium. Currently, I am having this rather confusing relationship with a local (Belgian) girl here who are also my classmate. This thing has already bothered me so much that I feel quite frustrated and at a complete loss. The problem can be summarized in a question whether she indeed has feelings for me (which I felt rather vague, cause she tend to change her attitude from time to time) or just being friendly (which I found to be "too persistent"). We hangout often, spent times together, and she even brought me to a candlelight dinner once (though I was too dense at the moment that I only realized it was one in the next morning T_T). What's more, we spent some time chatting in a bar after the dinner, and then she came to my room to help me translate some letters (in Dutch), by her own voluntary offer, near midnight. And I swear I can clearly saw she was blushing all the time during dinner and during our chat in the bar. Now we're planning to watch an opera next week. On the side note, we're all paying for our own bills in all these, so there's absolutely no scam here of she's trying to poach me. She almost always refused me whenever I offered to pay her bills.
I must admit that I have a huge crush on her. But being an international student here with some languange barrier even in English (my written English is fine, but my speaking skill is rather poor), we often meet with communication barriers when we get together. But even so, she still likes hanging out with me. As a matter of fact, she has never once refused my invitations to go out for lunch, dinner, or even to chat offer a cup of coffee or soup. But the thing is, I really wanted our relationship to proceed further, because now I feel really conscious about my own feelings for her and I'm so insecure and afraid because I have no idea how to make that happen. Moreover, I am a southeast Asian who came from a rather strict society when it comes to viewing a male-female relationship, that I totally have no idea whether girls here (in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe) can actually do all these things while thinking of just being friends (which girls in my country certainly cannot). I have known this girl for about 1 year now, and as far as I can tell, she is still single and doesn't seem to have a lot of male friends.
However, to be honest, she was a lot colder before during the first six months of us knowing each other. We got a little bit close after working together in a groupwork for one of our courses, but then she clearly showed me that she would like to make a distance between us. But strangely enough, like I said, she never refused my invitation to hangout and chat over coffees or soups. Fastforward a bit, before the new year's eve last year, I got rejected by her out of nowhere when I asked her whether she would like to come together with me to an event arranged by our classmate that night. By rejecting, I mean romantic rejection. And the funny thing is, I never even said anything about wanting a romantic relationship with her in the first place. Maybe somehow she just felt edgy and then just blurted out the words: "I don't really know what you implies here, but just to be sure, I like you only as a friends I have no other feelings." Those words stinged like hell. And I almost wanted to just cancel my booking to the event, cause I don't really want to meet her after that. But for the sake of saving my face, and showing her that I can gracefully accept that, I ended up attending the event. Naturally, I was very upset all the time during that event, and I just completely ignored her and stayed distracted and fidgety all the time. Then I began to think that I might ruin the mood and the event itself, so I just decided to leave early before the new year's countdown. And guess what: Just a moment after the countdown, when I was still walking home with feelings in shambles, she texted me and said "Happy New Year. Are you okay?" I just curtly replied to her "Happy new year too", without bothering to answer her question. Four days later, she sent me an email, asking me about how were my days and how is my studying for the exams and all such cliche things. I chose to ignore her email and left it unanswered. Later on she texted me saying the same thing, just like she insisted on me to reply her, and what's more she asked me whether I had time to go again for a lunch and to have some chat with her. I just flatly rejected it, stating exams as an excuse, and just telling her maybe we can go some other time after the exams, for the sake of courtesy. Afterward, she was like showering me with attention. She even helped me looking for all the needed materials for one of our final projects. I was still really in a bad shape at that time, that I could hardly concentrate on studying, so I honestly very grateful with her help cause it saved me a big time. And out of this gratefulness, I accepted her invitation later on and went on a lunch again with her. Then shortly after, a very serious bad thing happened with my family in my country, and I had to returned back there to take care of the problem.
I returned home and intentionally stayed there for 5 months, skipping an entire semester of my study, just to try to completely erase her out of my mind. And it did really work... until she emailed me again somewhere in March, saying thanks for tutoring her in one of the hardest math course we had during the first semester and for all the groupworks we did, cause she managed to pass all of the courses without any fail. She then offered to help me sending course notes by email to ease my study burden, because I missed so many classes already. I honestly found it strange how much she attributed her success to my help and our collaboration, because I honestly think she's quite smart and that she managed it all herself through her hardwork. Afterward, we began to exchange emails more often. However, I was still very much fedgety about this renewed friendship, and still very much tried to kept her out of my mind. When I planned to go back to Belgium in May, I only told my closest Chinese friend (also an international student) about it and chose not to tell anything to her. But somehow, she emailed me again later, citing that she heard from my friend that I would be back in Belgium shortly and invited me to join her group to work on a project together. This time, I just accepted her offer without further ado. Because I actually needed it. When I was back in Belgium and work with her in the project, I was still very much tried to stay aloof from her most of the time. We only met a few times to discuss it together with our other groupmate, and did most of the work from home. Then came the second semester holiday. And then, still more weird things happened. Citing the help of sending notes she offered me earlier, and how she was not able to fulfill the promise because she forgot about it at the time (it was spring break, so I think it's natural to forget about study), she texted me and offered me to lend her as many of her books and notes as I needed to prepare myself for my exam retakes. She lives in another city, so she had to go quite a long way from there to the university city (where I live) to bring the books. And when we finally met, she indeed brought me a lot of course notes, books, and even her project work. We had lunch again at a very fine and cozy garden restaurant at the time, and I was so touched by her attention, that I helplessly began to feel again for her. Afterward, the development was rather quick. I began to take the initiative again to ask her out. Citing returning the books as an excuse, I invited her to our first dinner date ever. And she accepted it. We go for a chat afterward in a coffee shop until about 11 o'clock. And I can still remember that she was much more cheerful and relaxed then I usually know her the entire time. Next, an even more unusual thing happened. She invited me along with two other friends to join her in a student rally event in Brussels. The funny thing is, this had completely nothing to do with us. The rally only concerned Flemish students, because it was precipitated by the decision of the Flemish government to raise the college tuition fee, and none of the friends she invited was actually a Flemish student (but she's one). One of them was a girl who lived in another part of Belgium, who would not directly affected by the issue, and the other one was my Chinese friend mentioned earlier, both of whom were almost surely to turn down the invitation. And they did turn it down. But I accepted it, and went there with her. Before going there, I was really under the impression that we definitely would go together with some of her Flemish friends. It's a student rally after all. However, it turned out she came alone to meet me at the train station. When I asked her whether she had any friends tagging along with her, she just said that she would meet with some of them during the rally. And it turned out, that she didn't meet any of them there. She didn't even try to look for them in the first place. So we just spent the whole time together, walking and joking in the midst of the crowd like doing some sort of guided tour through the streets of Brussels. And I do think it was pretty romantic. On the train back home, she was clearly very cheerful and I swear I could see her stealing glances at me a lot of time during our walk in the rally. Two weeks after, came the candlelight dinner that I mentioned at the beginning of my story.
So, here I now sitting looking back at all that have happened between us, and after going through all of those, my feelings for her now have run so deep, so much more than what I felt before I returned to my country. But whenever I think about bringing back the issue of romance into our current relationship, I got cold feet. I am always haunted by the first rejection, that the thought of having to go through all of such experience and pain again is strong enough to deter me from taking any action that might move our relationship forward. I know I am maybe a coward. And I know I have written A LOT here, just to let you know how much pent up feelings I have within my heart because of my confusion, fear, and frustration in trying to understand her attitude and actions toward me these past few months. Again, I came from a cultural background very different from hers. And I have no idea, nor do I dare to make any assumption, about how European girls see romance. Does she ever see everything that we had done together from a romantic point of view, or does she only consider them as fun activities done between friends? I really need advise to answer this. So, if there is any European girl reading this, and I profusely apologize for making you reading so much, please kindly lend me some good advises. Thank you very much in advance.