Iron Horse, I'm much better now, honest!! Don't be scared.

Mardigras,
JC has a great reputation. The downside for you is that the areas around that school are very expensive to live in. Jumeirah, Umm Suqeim, Safa etc. They would be a great area to live if you are lucky enough to get a villa there, though. Do you have a budget, are you getting a housing allowance, or will the company pay your rent 'at cost'? If the company have told you to look as close to the school as possible, they must be prepared to give you a good allowance? I would say for a villa in that area with shared facilities you would have to allow around 350K a year. Most villa's will have a small garden. Alot of villas are in compounds and have a shared pool and a small garden. We're from Australia where we didn't have a pool, but I think with kids it's important to have access to a pool here. I know there's the beach but most of the coast seems to be taken up by hotel resorts and maybe it's because we're really spoilt because of where we're from, but the beaches here aren't that fantastic, either. It's nice for the kids to be able to just go in the pool on a whim.

Saying that, it still wouldn't be too unreasonable to travel from Al Barsha or Emirates Hills to JC. I know alot of people do it but you would probably have to allow around 40-45 mins to get there and time leaving to avoid the traffic.