Corona Virus 2020 Charleston, SC week 1 home schooling, quarantine, forced family fun

Lisa: Hi welcome back to Rview podcast where we talk about life travel and real estate. I am Lisa Richart-Hernandez

George: And I’m George Hernandez

Lisa: And we are coming to you live from covid19 central where we’ve been on quarantine for a week.

George: thank god we just set up our recording studio upstairs in our house so um we’re okay being quarantined and we can still do our podcast and um try out our new equipment.

Lisa: Yeah I guess like even things from amazon are coming slower than they normally do which we’re just not used to. Because we’re so spoiled by amazon coming to our house I think like three times a day at least. We were already kind of everything is mobile I work from home so that’s a good thing let’s just kind of talk about our life with this whole quarantine situation first. We would start out talking about that and I think probably the biggest change that came this past week and I think these podcasts will be so interesting to look back on in the future. And say oh my gosh do you remember the first week of quarantine and that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about a little bit today.

But in South Carolina, we’re in charleston county school district all of the schools were shut down and they the kids kind of had some idea about it the week before so they had already started kind of getting them ready to go online and stuff but they didn’t realize that the governor was to like like on a Sunday night he didn’t even wait till they went back to school on Monday on a Sunday night he said all the schools were closed. So the kids were like yay no school! Until the next day when they got the emails that said we’re going to online schooling and you’re still going to continue to have your education.

George: So their vacation got cut short they all thought they were going to sit around and do nothing and just chill out they’ve got a ton of work to do now. Which is awesome the school has done a great job in uh putting together online classes and what their expectations are.

We’ve got an issue with our son Tyler who just tells us that he’s done everything and then we get a note from the teacher saying hey he’s only handed in one of the three assignments what’s going on? So we sit down with him and say okay did you read all the emails that your teacher sent you did you look at the video that your teacher sent you did you look at the links that are your teacher saying?

I mean the teachers are they’re making it so easy for these kids i mean the only other thing they can do is actually do the work for these kids. You know and that’s what we keep telling our son and right now he’s grounded.

George: I mean he it’s,

Lisa: grounded in the quarantine.

George: yeah double whammy, so he’s grounded can’t go anywhere but he still can’t go anywhere right. So he’s downstairs working on it right now and he’ll get caught up. But it’s just kudos to the teachers and the school system they’re doing a great job in keeping everything running and not letting these kids just go dormant or you know because.

Lisa: Well, I mean people would have not been able to graduate from high school and I mean we wouldn’t know that that could still be an issue I mean it’s going to last.

George: Obviously they’re going to graduate but they may not be able to walk they may not be able to you know walk across the stage to get their diploma they may not they may cancel proms so our son Ryan is a senior and I feel so bad for him. This is the senior year he’s played rugby for four years with the school are canceled his senior year. They’re talking about canceling the whole season, they’re talking about canceling nationals and he’s finally you know he’s worked so hard to get to this point where he’s the senior he’s doing great.

Lisa: There are so many people, even the college students that uh we got noticed that the kids will be online until the end of the semester and that the graduation commencements have been canceled. So you know there’s just a lot of disappointed people but I think you know in the overall grand scheme of things all things considered people are handling it really well our oldest daughter mandy was supposed to have our baby shower this weekend on Sunday. That was canceled I got a call from the restaurant before the governor had shut down all the restaurants and bars they had been already said yeah we’re going to be shutting down it’s canceled. There’s a lot of disappointment but I think overall everyone is handling the disappointment you know all things considered pretty well.

Let’s just talk a little bit more about the schools. So I made a post on Facebook and you know it just always I said what an amazing test of online schooling this is gonna be and I’d love to be the company that sells that software I didn’t mean it to make you know make money out of the emergency. But my meaning is being a salesperson there’s never been such a need for this type of I remember going to Disney and being in like what was it the space mountain and you’d walk through the thing and there was like

George: The little the carousel of life or whatever

Lisa: it is kids no the little kid’s like this is life in the future and the kids are on like computers and learning from home and I was like oh my gosh can you ever even imagine that well here it is you know 2020 and the kids are all across the country and not even just in our country but all over the world online schooling. So we’re finding where the pros and cons are to that how good and bad it is,

George: but the sad thing is that people when they read people, are just so negative we actually both got off of Facebook real quick tangent. We got off of Facebook because of all the negative negativity we got off for a week. And just we finally went back on and I posted and I said listen I’m blocking everybody who puts negative comments on. Let’s all just be positive let’s all be here for each other so and what Lisa was saying she put up the comment about wow what a time to be in this media because it’s never been done before and of course people are like well it’s not a time to profit on a virus or a pandemic. And Lisa is like I’m not talking about profiting I’m talking about the ability to get this done.

Lisa: technology the technology to be able to create a real environment. And see the challenges that we’re gonna face and solve those problems. Like for example kudos to charleston county school districts have equipped the school buses with wi-fi towers they are putting breakfast and lunches for people that financial financially need these underprivileged kids come in and this might be the only breakfast and lunch these children get. And they can’t afford to have wi-fi and they can’t afford to have a computer they handed out home books to all of the children that were in need and then they drove these buses into the middle of these neighborhoods to provide wi-fi service for the children in those areas that are most affected that need the internet.

To be able to do and continue and their box breakfast and lunch. I think that they pulled this off in under a week that’s pretty amazing considering there’s never been some sort of global pandemic where we’ve had to figure out how we’re going to provide education for all these kids I don’t I really truly don’t think that anybody this is all uncharted territory.

George: It’s all news that everybody all the school districts the whole country the whole world. But again touching on Lisa’s subject this is not just for charleston this should be looked at by everybody especially up north with all the snow and snow days and makeup days and you know you lose so many days to snow and then these kids have to make it up they’re losing their summertime they’re losing their just their schedules are getting thrown off. Because they’re trying to make up all these days. Well if this system works then you don’t have to make up days. When you’re school closes.

Right if the school closes for a week because you got a blizzard. Well okay go online you know how it works you know how the system works.

Lisa: Well to think about this charleston we got two inches of snow what two-three years ago that was like once every 20 years it snows in charleston and that happened like two years ago yeah charleston we shut down for almost two weeks I mean the people up in Michigan would laugh at us going you shut down because of two inches of snow and we’re like yeah because there’s no way to handle it.

I can remember because I grew up in Michigan and George grew up in new york and we went out in my front-wheel-drive car we couldn’t even do a donut it was like not even enough snow to do that

and people were like I can’t believe you’re out there risking your lives in the snow and I’m like seriously this is like I’m from Michigan this is nothing you like when we go to school when there’s like

snow above the top of your car. As long as it doesn’t cover your roof.

George: Well it’s all relative also I mean south Carolina has zero we don’t have salt we don’t have anything they put sand on the bridges that all freeze so may be up in that I get it I totally get it and nobody has experience driving it so it’s super dangerous um for those people but um I did get my donuts and I actually had to do it in a golf cart but I got it I got to show the kids how to do donuts.

Lisa: Southern-style donuts in the golf cart so all right well kind of enough about uh that whole situation but I just kudos definitely to charleston county school district I was really pleased to see what they’ve done. Everybody’s working their hardest to get things done uh one thing I have to say so all this again pros and cons all of my friends and myself included listen I’m not a stay-at-home mom or a homeschooler.

So all of this having three teenagers at home trying to get their schoolwork done on the internet using my home office to get the work done has been this is only the first week and it has already been a challenge.

George: Hold on sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt but I read on Facebook one of our friends was like this is only day two and I’m ready to just hang myself oh yeah it’s just well all of a sudden you’re thrown into homeschooling.

Lisa: uh appreciation for teachers 100 I already appreciated the teachers as they were but uh really really um really have a newfound respect for them so anyways we’re doing the online thing and the good thing is i can see now what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. The bad thing is I can see now what they’re doing what they’re not doing uh but this is it’s just been very interesting and not um definitely not my cup of tea.

So usually we talk about life travel and real estate in our travel section when we were doing our show notes it’s pretty bleak looking right now huh nothing to report here yes George is usually our travel planner and um basically everything that we’ve had on the books has been canceled so we were supposed to go to the heritage golf tournament down in Hiltonhead island south Carolina we really look forward to that. And that was canceled that was supposed to be uh like the week of easter second week in April and then it was owner’s week down at our Hiltonhead island motorcoach resort which is one of our just kind of we call um our little paradise and uh we just go down there it’s about two and a half hours south of charleston and we just enjoy going down there in the Rv we bought a place there.

And owner’s week is something we all look forward to because our friends and are all there all at the same time and that’s been canceled so we’re bummed about that and then uh we were supposed to well we still have a trip plan that hasn’t been canceled to the Dominican republic for Ryan’s graduation with the whole family. And uh we don’t know if that’s going to happen or not.

George: It’s still quite a bit away so we’re not canceling anything until we absolutely have to but right it’s looking bleak right now. But I always say when life gives you lemons just add vodka. So I’ve taken this opportunity of everything being canceled to make appointments for everything that I need to be done to the RV so it’s in the shop right now and getting worked on.

Because like Lisa said we travel so much that there’s a lot of times that I can’t get it in because we’re going on a trip or I’ll talk to them and I’ll say hey I’ll put it in but I need it back in a week and of course they can’t knock it out in a week so downtime to get it fixed cleaned up got everything tweaked. So that when this coronavirus lifts we are gone!

Lisa: yeah so um what’s the name of the rv repair place that you started taking the rv to? We had just some really bad experiences at another place a big low big national brand that everybody anybody who’s in an Rv-ing will say they have terrible service I’m not gonna say their names. But um if you’re you probably can figure it out if you’ve owned any kind of camping rv or trailer. So we got really frustrated with that company and so George started to search around and we just really want to give a shout out to this a place that we have in it’s in north charleston, uh South Carolina and they’ve just given us great service what’s the name of it, George?

George: It’s called Campers in RV. They do fantastic work their service is very very good they do what they say they’re gonna do yes a million percent I guess that makes them awesome, yeah I mean sadly to me. it’s all about communications and the other place that we won’t mention just.

Lisa: Really we’d have it for two weeks and they wouldn’t do one little tiny thing that was supposed to be done it was just crazy!

George: They’re just they just have so much business that they don’t it every review says that their service is terrible but yet they advertise that they have the best service in the country yeah but um again let me give a shout out to campers in rv of charleston their phone number is 843-719-2001. They do great work they do it on time and their communication is top-notch the other

Lisa: They do warranty work also which was um they looked up our warranty information for us they searched it out they got the parts on order a lot of people go back to you know places where they need warranty work and to uh so warranty work is a big deal if you are in that industry or own a camper rv whatever.

George: yes and they do everything from interior work to motor work to you name it they do it they’re working on the generator right now which is no that’s uh cummings of uh Somerville that’s a different company camping in is doing our uh instant hot water heater okay okay so as soon as cummings is done with the generator then cummings has been really good too cummings has been fantastic I’ll give you their phone number in a minute, unfortunately, I brought it in before our last trip and they told me that it was just a module that went bad.

So I brought it in yesterday and they took the module output the new module in and it seems like there’s something wrong with the alternator or something so they had to actually pull the whole generator out of the rv and here again is where I’m so happy with the communication he called me up he told me what was going on and he said listen i know you were ready to go on a trip so I had the guy just pull the whole generator out your RV’s ready to go you just don’t have a generator we’re gonna work on it while you’re traveling and then come back and we’ll put it back in and we’ll have you ready to go.

Well,l okay now I know what’s going on I can plan accordingly but since everything got canceled I told them that I appreciate all the heads up but just keep it there get it done no sense in me picking it up since we’re not going anywhere and they’ve got a very secure lot so I’m not concerned about leaving it there for a week or two weeks or whatever

Lisa: Yeah that’s great so unfortunately not a whole bunch of big huge travel plans going on for us and uh our last kind of portion we talk about is the real estate and unfortunately there’s not a ton to talk about in real estate either just what I’ve you know people ask me how is it affecting your business I was looking at a post from an agent in California this morning as a matter of fact and apparently California has already come out with an addendum to address the covet 19 virus basically stating if you should lose your job if you become ill or for any reason you can’t close that specifically directly due to this virus that you can be let out of escrow.

They’ll return your earnest money so at least protects your earnest money I actually emailed her and said could you please send me that because I’d love to see a copy of it and I hope that some south Carolina will implement that soon.

Apparently the governor of South Carolina yesterday did make real estate a mandatory trade uh necessary trade so people can still buy and sell houses I have a closing today as a matter of fact thank goodness what’s really interesting I’m trying to keep my employees working I have a virtual assistant in the Philippines. You know we are so we think that we’re so limited to the united states but we don’t really realize and we talk about Italy we talk about china but the whole entire world is affected by this it’s not just us sitting at home Matt my virtual assistant I said how is it over there he said everything is shut down.

He said it’s so eerie because they go out and there are roadblocks like they are only allowing them in certain places so there’s like even roadblocks and everything shut down in the Philippines it’s like I said I’m doing everything I can to keep my employees working even in the Philippines because he has a family to feed so we’re fortunate that we can do our business from home um that being said the other thing is people are worried about having showings on their houses because they don’t want people to be bringing the virus and people tramps them through their house but they still need to sell their home so there are a couple of solutions that I’ve thought of and I’ve seen from other some other real estate agents.

One of them is called a matterport tour which is I do this for my usually just like my big high-end houses because you know if you’ve got a 5 000 square foot house it’s a real pain to get ready for a showing and then the people don’t like the floor plan or whatever so we do this 3d matterport tour literally the people can be virtually walking through the house on this tour.

So by the time the people actually see the house in person they already have a very good feel for the layout and what it looks like and so we know that they’re serious buyers when they come so one thing that we could do for this pandemic is just done matter ports for all of our listings and that way people can get that tour online. Then the agent in California that I listened to this morning as a matter of fact was saying they were going to only allow matterport tours and then write a contract if you’re that very interested then we’ll allow you to have an inspection so you’re getting real buyers potential buyers in there

But for buyers everybody I mean we can’t squirt out uh 5 000 matterport tours um over the next couple of weeks uh there’s not enough people in charleston that do better portraits to do that but View Properties is my real estate company we have what’s called a virtual showing assistant so any buyers that are interested in looking at houses can email us the house that they want to look at and we will send somebody over there. Just one agent so we’re not transiting a whole family through your house and we’ll do a video tour for that potential buyer and we will email them. Then we what we do is we upload it to youtube on a private link that only that buyer can see or only people we share the link with can see. So they get a real good feel for do I really like this house or not do I want to risk getting out of my house and going into someone else’s house that I don’t know to actually go check it out.

So those are a few things that we’ve come up with to try to continue our business as it is and get home sold for people that still need to move I am concerned that people will get behind on their payments and stuff like that I do specialize in short sales and foreclosures and I don’t foresee this pandemic bringing us back to where we were in 2008 with the crash.

There is uh since I do work in foreclosures in default also they have put a moratorium on any foreclosures and evictions fortunately for the people that were already in a bad situation they’re not going to proceed with any foreclosures until this is all over uh that being said you know don’t forget that those people that are being foreclosed on sometimes those are landlords sometimes those are people that have their own bills to pay and they can’t get people evicted either. So there are two sides to every story and it’s just a sad situation all the way around and i think that our government is doing everything they can at this point on a kind of day-to-day basis to cover some of those things.

But that was a long I’ve been talking for a long time babe that was a lot of input about real estate there.

George: well that’s your specialty is the real estate and let’s all just keep in mind that we’re all in the same situation everybody’s quarantined everybody’s trying to get out and work and do their thing worldwide but it’s just we all have to sit back and let this thing ride out just keep that in mind.

I read a post today from a friend of mine who’s a doctor I could literally hear the fear in her eye and her sound and her words sorry. Basically, she just posted that this epidemic is affecting everybody.

Everybody’s so you know talking about oh my god I’m quarantined at home just like we’re doing and she said she’s got the double whammy because she is quarantined but she also took an oath to serve people and take care of them. She can’t go home to her so she’s in the front line taking care of these sick patients and her really just kind of opened up and on her post.

And said that you know don’t believe everything you hear on the news. Because they’re short on equipment they’re short on respirators they’re short on protective gear for the doctors she put an example of you know we send our soldiers to war and tell them you know you need a bulletproof vest but we don’t have enough but if you wear this garbage bag you’re going to be fine because it’s two-ply after all.

So you’re going to be fine you know let’s keep those people you know in our prayers and our thoughts. Her biggest thing and it’s sad that her own friends won’t hang out with her because she’s in the hospital because of her job well of course not you say of course not. But she takes every precaution she can to keep herself clean protected and everything. But it’s just that occupation you see her and you go, man, I love you but I don’t want to hang out with you because you got it.

Lisa: Well I mean our friends who we’re gonna have on our podcast later this week, uh our friend Daniella and Stephanie Stephanie is a travel agent and a flight attendant and she does private flights and he was just on the road for 20 days.

Daniella is a concierge and he’s from Italy he’s from Venice area and so we’re going to talk to them about his first-hand accounts of what’s happening with his friends in Italy and Stephanie you know travel business Daniella was a concierge at a hotel here in charleston that he thinks is going to close Keely one of my buyer’s agents that works for me her husband is a general sales manager for another beautiful hotel in downtown he’s one of the top salespeople in Marriott. And he had to let two of his employees um like let them go this week and so it’s all very uncertain and the travel industry and so many of our friends are affected by that.

I was reading a letter again on Facebook uh that someone had posted from an Italian doctor who described the same thing as your friend but he’s already kind of been past that he

said imagine everything is fine and then it’s not and these people start coming in and you’re doing he says not only he said he hadn’t seen his family in person in a month. He only had you know

thank god we have face time and that kind of things now anyways the technology but still not the same as being home with your family and he said and then you start seeing people come in and we don’t have enough respirators for them and we don’t have enough beds for them.

I mean it was just like the reality of it from a person who’s actually experienced it is I think maybe if you would have asked me two weeks ago I probably would have had a different mindset like maybe a lot of us out there that was like wow you know this is overacting this is too much like that couldn’t be possible then people start going yeah really is possible and you think wow.

George: Well it definitely is possible and I think everybody’s now taking it seriously and doing everything they can to do their part. We all have to do our part. Wash your hands, stay at home if you don’t have to go out stay at home,

Lisa: and listen to our podcast

George: Right listen to our podcast sit back relax laugh with us cry with us whatever you want to do. But let’s all just do our part and if we do our part this too shall pass. And I’m a firm believer that when this passes everybody is going to everything’s just going to blossom like in spring the flowers are going to come out people are going to start spending money and we also have to keep that in mind once this is over we all have to help our own communities we have to go to the restaurants and get them up and running again and boost the economy and I think I really think that the economy is going to bounce back tremendously because.

Lisa: Well we were in a great economy when this hit and so you know there’s still pent up demand for everything that we need like my brother works for rapid repairs and he’s like you know some people don’t want us to come and I was like yeah I mean I get that but at the same time those repairs are still going to be there when he’s when we get back out you know.

George: It’s going to be double because yeah he’s going to not only the repairs that were there imagine everything that’s happening now and breaking and yeah so his business is going to boom again restaurants as soon as the doors open let’s get out there meeting at home yes people are sick and tired of eating at home and I’m getting creative with it but I will say I’d like to look for the silver lining and everything my silver lining is that we have our family here you know.

We Lauren is in college the kids are always out they’re always doing something well now it’s kind of a forced family time.

Lisa: Of course family fun!

George: And it has been fun and it has been nice and even the kids have said it themselves oh my god it’s so nice to hang out and eat dinner together and play games and yeah you know I guess to look at it from that perspective and think about wow you know maybe this should open our eyes at least for us and we need to do more family time at home. We all get wrapped up in our lives you know we again Lisa and I love to travel so we travel a lot and we just let’s take a second and stop and smell the roses people

Lisa: Yeah this is a great time to start new healthy habits which I haven’t started one yet. But I was thinking that it’s a great time to start new healthy habits

George: I believe that as long as we’re thinking about healthy habits it counts no it would be a great time to do something new

Lisa: I think we should each a week like come up with a corona I think are we supposed to call it coven 19 or is it coronavirus still poor corona

George: I know oh imagine that marketing nightmare if you worked for corona beer.

Lisa: oh the so funny thing is I remember like what was it about a month when we were on our trip like when we were traveling about maybe a month or so ago uh we were talking about the stock market and you’re like yeah this no that I guess this coronavirus shut things down and I said I thought he was joking I was like haha what’s the punch line he’s like no it’s seriously called the coronavirus and I was like no really what’s the punch line and he’s like no it’s the virus is called the coronavirus so of course. I googled it and I was like holy crap I’d hate to be corona right now that’s terrible. I’m sure they’ll make it through this marketing thing.

George: And again after all this is done let’s all drink a couple of extra coronas to help them out I’m sure I guarantee you they took a hit. Just because word association and it’s terrible to think about that yeah maybe um I want to give one more shout out to a friend of ours that is in Italy lives in Sorrento Italy um and I’ve been keeping tabs on him and his family on Facebook and uh I’ll say this much I know they are suffering right now because they’ve had a tremendous loss of life.

But in his posts and several other posts that we’ve seen on Facebook. He and his family live in an apartment building surrounded by apartment buildings and everybody goes out on their balconies every single night and they sing and they laugh and they literally are screaming back and forth to each other one guy set up a DJ booth the other night and they had like a block party from their balconies another guy set up a piano and he was playing the piano and the whole you could hear everybody singing along and it was so cool to see that and so cool to see that they’re just trying to live a normal life their new normal life that’s going on right now so let’s keep those people in our prayers and hope that that passes and they don’t have anymore.

Lisa: I think we’re going to start seeing a lot of stuff like that from new york city.

George: of course, I don’t know if they can all open their windows new york city they can’t open their windows very few people have balconies but you know what may be here’s another thing that I heard about and I thought was super cool I think it’s in London or somewhere in England they put out a notice on Facebook that for example on Tuesday at 10 o’clock every radio station is going to play the same song at the same exact time and they want everybody to sing along at the top of their lungs and I wish I hope that somebody puts out a video of that because that’s going to be so cool.

so everybody’s coming together and that’s a great thing to see and we all need to ride this wave even after coronavirus is over. Let’s keep riding that wave let’s all stick together let’s stop the bickering let’s stop the fighting that stopped the negativity on Facebook.

Facebook in my opinion was created to bring us together and to have a place for all of us to talk and share our experiences and talk about how wonderful our kids are and just share your life, not your negativity yeah like people always say if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all just keep it to yourself there’s enough negativity we don’t need to feel we don’t need any more added yeah we don’t need to feel the fire.

Lisa: That’s right well that’s all for this week friends so glad we could chat today and look forward to our upcoming podcast with Danielle and Stephanie who are going to talk to us about uh their experience firsthand with his friends from Italy and Stephanie our favorite travel agent who is going to talk about her industry and all the cancellations and how things are affecting her and her experience as she just traveled for the last 20 days as a flight attendant.

so um look forward to that coming up as a supplementary podcast that we should have coming up within the next week please subscribe to our podcast so that you will be alerted when we have a new one and download them if you go to iTunes and you go to our podcast a lot of our listeners listen on iTunes you go to the podcast RView Podcast and then you scroll down to the bottom and it says to leave a review and there are some stars there we love five stars we love your reviews we’d love to hear your feedback you can also uh go to our website which is RViewpodcast.com that’s the letter R V like RViewpodcast.com.

So review podcast its play on words rv and then we also believe it or not we’re on Alexa so you can listen to us and in tune in your kitchen or wherever you have Alexa so you say to Alexa she gets confused with our name so you have to go Alexa play podcast Rview life travel in real estate and you have to say the life travel in real estate or she just she starts sending us random things so

tested her out a few times to say Alexa play podcast rv life travel in real estate and she’ll say all right and she’ll put it on your Alexa so you can listen while you’re making dinner for your family and uh laugh at our podcast and share it with your friends.

George: if you do the Alexa thing can you select which podcast because every time we do it plays the same one. we gotta figure that out.

Lisa: Plays the most recent one I believe but you can like say next or back okay or previous or something like that okay we got it we’ll practice with Alexa.

George: And uh we’re gonna try to put out the podcast with Danielle and Stephanie sometime this week so it won’t be out next Friday will be a regular podcast we’ll probably have a few sides podcasts everything that’s going on our son Ryan wants to come on the show with us and talk to us I think we’re going to talk to him about uh being a senior and having to deal with the coronavirus and how it’s affecting him and he’s getting ready to go to college so we’re going to get a teenage perspective on the coronavirus and getting ready for college.

Lisa: Have a great day thanks for listening.

George: Bye thank you for listening we’ll see you next Friday!